


Spilled Drinks and Broken Hearts

by Tokyo_the_Glaive



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-03-21 05:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3679440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tokyo_the_Glaive/pseuds/Tokyo_the_Glaive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the fallout of the Silva Incident, both Q and Bond bear scars.  With no time to mourn or recover, they must carry on as best as they can.  Bond and Q must learn to trust and rely on each other if they hope to make it through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clocks

James Bond measures his time with spilled drinks and broken hearts.

The clock ticks — one mark, double-0, three women, four bombs, five martinis, six shots to a Walther PPK/S…

Q types a line of code, deletes it, retypes it.  Bond, back from a disastrous mission in Nigeria, has not returned his gun.

“Now, pay attention, 007,” Q had said.  Bond had laughed.  He hadn’t been laughing when he had bungled the charges Q had given him, inadvertently setting them off far too close to his immediate location.  He had been off the grid for eight hours.

The line of code stares at him.  Brackets and letters hide ones and zeroes, and zeroes paired together accuse Q of mismanagement and failure.  Q can see Bond’s face in his mind, all sharp features and sociopathic tendencies culminating in “a job well done”, God Save the Queen, and could you please try to bring the equipment back in one piece next time, thank you?

Q erases the line of code, shuts his laptop.  He takes a sip of cold tea.  It’s grown bitter and strong whilst sitting unattended.  

An unattended agent works just the same way.  Bond’s sugar coat, that which makes him attractive to friend and foe alike, grows thinner every time it’s shed to reveal the predator underneath.  One day, it will dissolve entirely.  

(Crystal structures, once melted, do not reform the same way.  Impurities that were lodged amongst the crystals become trapped within them, disrupting the pattern, corrupting the system.  X-ray crystallography can salvage a melted crystal, determine its constituent parts, lock it in place.)

((Coincidentally, sugars are notoriously hard to pin down by x-ray crystallography.))

Q isn’t sure if he wants to know what happens when the glucose shell finally disappears.  Bond needs it like he needs air and gin.  Corpses, on the other hand do not.

There are ten dead in Nigeria.  Nine of them are civilian casualties.

Q resolutely does not think about corpses, does not look at Bond when he drops off his report and his his excuses about his guns.

The clock resets itself, stops.

* * *

“There’s a service stairwell to your left,” Q says.  He can see the entire floor plan of the hotel on two screens.  Bond is a single wiggling blue dot, ripples emanating from the middle representing margins of error.

Q can hear the grunt as Bond forces the door to the stairwell open, the clicks and footfalls nearly indistinguishable as Bond all but slides his way down.

There are red dots chasing him.  Red dots everywhere.

“Potential hostiles coming up your way,” Q says.  The burst of gunfire coming through the speakers turns “potential” into “certain”.

“Helpful.” Bond grunts again.  “How many on the stairs?”

“Two.”

The slowest ten seconds in the history of time elapse, and the shooting stops.  The two red dots do not disappear (he’s monitoring heat signatures, and bodies do not cool so quickly), but they’re no longer moving.  The blue dot passes over them.  Q likes to imagine it that way, Bond floating over his enemies.

In reality, Q can hear the squelch of Bond’s shoes against the metal of the stairwell.  Less blood on his hands, more on his Crockett & Jones.

“You’re four storeys above ground,” Q says.  “Get to the first floor.  There are three coming up behind you.”

Bond is moving fast and his heart rate is up.  Q lost direct visual contact when the assailants shut off all CCTV feeds, the clever bastards.

“You’re looking for 1102.”

“The door’s locked.”  Q doesn’t respond, and he hears Bond break it off of its hinges.  It’s too much to hope that the men chasing Bond won’t see the bloodied footprints, will pass by the first floor in favor of searching ground.

“What am I looking for?”

“Black notebook,” Q says.  “Pocket-sized, frayed edges.”

A moment, then, “Got it.”

“Exit by window.”

Bond curses.  It’s probably directed at Q, but the quartermaster can’t be bothered to care.  This mission was supposed to be easy.

(That is, Q wasn’t meant to be involved.  He should have known better: nothing is ever easy.)

A Belgian tourist had bought a stolen notebook believing that it was a historic collectible.  The purloined notebook’s original owner was a balding gentleman in the employ of the British government whose knowledge regarding thermonuclear fusion was unparalleled but whose mind was often more on his reactions than on his belongings.  Given the contents of the notebook, MI6 wanted it back.  Bond was sent on the off-chance that the tourist proved less than amenable to the usual methods of extraction.  It was all so simple.

Of course, it had gone pear-shaped at the last possible moment.  The tourist had been shot just outside of the hotel, one bullet to the forehead.  In the ensuing chaos, the police had been called.  Bond had spotted the shooter entering the hotel by way of a side stairwell and had pursued.  Somewhere along the line, also known to Q as 4:47 PM GMT, Bond had called for Q to act as an auxiliary pair of eyes.  The quartermaster had found that, between the police and the unknown militants (apparently the shooter had friends in several places), the hotel was swarming with people who wouldn’t take kindly to a tetchy 00-agent on the prowl.

Q knows that he ought not ask whether the men Bond found on the stairwell had been police or militia.  He shouldn’t care.

Bond’s dot is outside of the hotel now.  Q can see him by way of street cameras.  It doesn’t look like he’s being followed, but it also doesn’t look like Bond plans to follow the directions that Q gave him to start out with.  The agent doesn’t speak, so Q assumes that Bond no longer requires or desires his assistance.  Even so, he must remain on the line.  Protocol mandates someone work the lines from the moment an agent calls in until the very moment that same agent gives the sign that supervision is no longer necessary, and Bond doesn’t take kindly to changes to the voice in his ear.

Even through the grainy images, Q can see that Bond’s shoes are soaked with blood.

* * *

Q hears rather than sees Moneypenny coming for him.

“They invented email for a reason,” he says when he hears her stop.  He’s working on a new prototype — this one’s a small scanner, the equivalent of a very small x-ray microtomographer, or micro-CT.  For all the world, it’s meant to look like a credit card, but it actually uses x-rays to scan straight through desired material.  If it works, there will be no need to steal files or even to so much as touch them, just to take a scan of them and quietly exit the premises.

“They invented planes for a reason, too,” Moneypenny says.  Q can see her looking over his shoulder at his work and instinctively moves it out of sight.

When he realizes she has no intentions of leaving, Q blinks twice, frowns.  “What can I do for you today, Miss Moneypenny?”

“M wants to see the specs for the GM-CC drive.”

Q rolls his eyes.  “Ridiculous.  It’s still a prototype.”

Moneypenny shifts her weight forward, closer to him.  Q knows that Moneypenny rarely delegates tasks and prefers to deliver messages herself.  Q thinks she’s lonely upstairs, sitting at a desk in front of a door that no one goes through unexpectedly.  She’s not needed up there, not really, and she knows it.  Everyone knows it.  That’s why it hurts.

She fractured, when she shot Bond.  It startled her, and like Bond, she lost her balance.  Only, where he landed in water, she hit the ground.  That “bloody shot” cost MI6 a bloody good agent.  She pieced herself together, of course, put the little bits back together into the shape of a human being, all nice and fitted to silk dresses and stilettos.  Still, when Q looks at her all he sees is himself in replicate, every shard of her being showing him for what he is.  Moneypenny is disconcerting like that.

“He wants to see it anyway,” Moneypenny says.  “Didn’t you send 007 out with the prototype?  Surely you have data from that.”

Q’s frown deepens.  “He hasn’t returned.  Besides, this is 007.  Do you honestly think the drive lasted long enough to serve its purpose?”

“Your faith in me is astounding.”

The quartermaster and Moneypenny jolt as 007 emerges from someplace just outside of their joint peripheral visions.  Q adjusts his glasses and Moneypenny shifts backwards again.

“Drive,” Bond says.  He grins, and it doesn’t reach his eyes.  Q thinks of swimming in the arctic, decides that Bond is colder and just as dangerous.  “Slightly charred, but still functional.  Damn good piece of tech.”

The agent all but saunters out of Q-Division.  Q watches him, all sharp lines and easy grace.  Still, Q misses what Moneypenny sees.

“He’s hurt,” Moneypennys says.

“What?”

“His leg.  He’s not limping, but his gait is off.  And there’s something wrong with his hand.”

Bond is already gone, so Q has to take her word for it.  He ribs Moneypenny for knowing how Bond walks, though they both know that everyone with eyes turns to look when Bond enters a room.

When Moneypenny leaves, Q goes through the most recent charts to come through Medical to see if Bond went in for a visit.  Decidedly, his stomach does not turn when he reads about multiple skin lacerations, burns down his entire right side, and a curious oblong indent in his right hand, as if he had been holding something small and metal when he had come in contact with the flames.

Q fingers the GM-CC drive.  Slightly charred, indeed.

* * *

Bond is in Paris.

It starts with that same pulsing blue dot.  It pulses, but the dot itself does not move.  Bond is not moving.  Q’s eyes watch the dot, watch Bond, not moving.  The clock is ticking.

Q nurses a cup of hot tea and shivers.  Its cold in Q-Divison, and neither the tea nor his favorite cardigan can keep out the chill.  The electronics need to be kept well-below standard room temperature, as do most of the chemicals.  Q resents it, some days, and this happens to be one of those days.  He’s hoping beyond hope that he can get through his shift and let the night crew take over without anyone calling in over their feeds, particularly Bond.  Anyone but Bond.

Q very, very much wants to leave.  He’s been working on a new casing for the GM-CC drive, something that won’t conduct heat, but he’s made no progress and he’s tired.  He wants to go home and sleep, and maybe, if he’s lucky, get some rest.  Lately, sleep and rest haven’t gone hand in hand.  When he closes his eyes, the numbers come back for him.  

Ten dead in Nigeria, nine of them civilians, eight of them children; thirty-seven missing guns of various models; four agents missing in Syria.  Fifteen reports to file, two new promotions, one agent dead in Hong Kong — one of the newly promoted of Q-Division had been on the line with Agent Terran, Q remembers as he tries to sleep.  He had screamed through the line for Agent Terran to get up, just move—

Bond.  There are two targets.  It’s a simple reconnaissance mission.  Two women (married) are suspected of smuggling drugs (mostly speedball) into England.  It would be a problem for the port authorities, except that three cases hit the BBC regarding a new influx of drugs laced with some very sophisticated chemicals just four days ago and the news generated more panic than shouting fire in a crowded theater.  One victim is never going to wake up again, the rest are dead.  M suspects that there is a target audience and wants the operation shut down.

He suspects this mostly because it’s MI5 agents dropping like flies, the bloody idiots.

Bond has been on the ground in Paris for six hours.  Q didn’t send him in with much, just a tracker radio, a gun, an audio recorder, and orders from the top not to engage his targets for any reason.  The gun was meant for self-defense and threats for local authorities, if need be, but not to kill.

Q’s shift ends at seven.

It’s precisely 6:56 GMT in the evening when Q hears Bond’s voice over the feed.

“I see them,” he says simply.

Q doesn’t pick up his head from where he’s let it rest on the table.  He curses Bond in every language he knows before picking up the feed.

“I don’t,” Q says.  “Where are you?”

Bond laughs.  “You know where I am, see for yourself.  Where are you?”

Q is already clicking through a series of screens.  Bond’s tracker (hidden in the back of the radio transmitter) puts him outside of a third rate Thai restaurant in the arrondissement des Gobelins.  Each of Bond’s cars are empty.  Q frowns.

“Did you have to steal a car?”

“Who says I stole it?”  Q sighs, and Bond continues, “You haven’t answered my question.”

“My office.”

“You’re not home yet?”

He doesn’t want to talk about this.  “Why would I be, 007?”

Bond doesn’t answer right away, so Q takes the opportunity to say, “I know you stole it because all I can see is your GPS location.”

The agent doesn’t miss a beat.  “I knew you’d gotten to my cars with your little cameras.  Let’s hope you haven’t gotten my flat, too.”

“Don’t you have something to be doing, 007?”

“Mm, I do.  But I was thinking.”

“That’s a rather dangerous pastime for you, or so I’m told.”

Bond laughs over the line.  “I know.  Instruments aren’t supposed to think.”  There’s an odd pause, entirely uncharacteristic of the James Bond Q knows.  When he speaks again, his voice is a little different.  “They’ve picked a terrible restaurant.”

Q purses his lips.  He doesn’t like this shift in tone, not at all.  “What is the capital of Kyrgyzstan?”

Bond laughs again, and he almost sounds right.  “Osh.  I’m a double-0 agent, not a rookie.  What makes you think I’m under duress?”

The correct incorrect answer to the question does little to ease the tensions steadily forming in Q’s shoulders.  “You sound odd.  Is your feed all right?”

Bond is quiet for long enough that Q nearly asks another safety question.

“Go home, Q,” Bond says.  His voice is low, rough, different again.  Q doesn’t remember ever having this problem before.

The quartermaster opens his mouth and recognizes the sound of static.  Bond has hung up on him, so to speak, and has probably destroyed the earpiece to boot.  With a huff, Q reports that Bond has dropped off of the grid, dumps his tea in the Q-Division kitchenette, and calls for a cab to take him home.


	2. Disconnect

Q has not slept in two days.

“Go home,” R says.  Q glares at her.  He looks like a petulant child, and he knows it.

“There’s something wrong with the feeds,” he says.

“There’s nothing wrong with the feeds.”

“I went home two days ago.”

“Go back.”

Q slams the wireless receiver down with a little more force than necessary.  He’s made just about every adjustment he can think of — although maybe replacing the transmitter’s casing alloy will help, his brain supplies, part of a never-ceasing litany of moderately helpful possibilities to test and try.  He catches R’s eye and stops.

“What?” he snaps.

“You’re a menace,” R says.  “Two days now you’ve been a human tornado, and I’ll have you know that even the natural kind have the decency to taper off after a few hours.  But you?  You’ve been terrorizing employees with your bouts of mania, and even I’m getting fed up with your antics.  Now you get out of this division before I call M to tell him you’re a danger to yourself and others.”

“I am not a danger—“

Q stops when he catches sight of a crisp suit coming down the corridor.  Bond’s smile is smug, and his eyes drill lasers in everything unfortunate enough to come before them.

“Discrediting your capacity for annihilation, Q?” Bond asks as he approaches.

“007,” Q says.  R has stepped away.  She’s never liked Bond, though Q has never gotten a straight answer as to why.  “I hope your equipment is in some semblance of working order.”

“Well,” Bond says.  “Some semblance.”  He’s got that smile that doesn’t win hearts so much as sex drives.  (Of course, the hearts come later.  Q has theories about why, and most of them revolve around a fascinating academic paper about the science of sexual attraction.  According to the researchers who penned it, in order to survive, animals often choose dangerous or erratic partners to help ensure that those tendencies will not be directed at themselves.)  

“Earpiece,” Q demands.  Bond’s smile doesn’t fade so much as it crystallizes.  “Don’t tell me you smashed it.”

“It wasn’t working properly,” Bond says smoothly.

Q turns to R.  “See?  I told you, there’s something wrong with the feeds.”

R’s frustration is evident in every line of her body.  “Q, you’ve been over everything.  There is nothing wrong with the feeds.”  She turns to Bond.  “You smashed something that you didn’t think was working properly, lovely.  You know, we use that kind of data to fix things.”

Bond arches an eyebrow.  “I’ll remember that next time you need something fixed.  Awfully hard to know in advance.”

R walks away.  Q wishes he could, too, but Bond hasn’t moved, and Q still doesn’t know why he’s here.  Bond, ever the helpful one, doesn’t speak.

“Do you try to exasperate everyone you work with?” Q asks.

Bond’s smile has neither softened nor abated.  “Only the ones I like,” he says.

Q rolls his eyes.  “Well, she doesn’t like you,” he says.  Bond doesn’t move in the slightest.  “Sod it all.  Go away, 007.  Go find someone else to play with.”

“I didn’t realize you were having fun.”

“I’m not.  Evidently, you are.”

Q has the discomfiting feeling that Bond’s eyes are doing more than just watching: they’re raking, scanning, finding every weakness in the being known as “Q”.  The quartermaster doesn’t like it.

“Not exactly,” Bond says.  He hands over the remains of his equipment, and Q goes back to examining the receiver if only to have something to do.

“No shots fired,” Bond supplies.  He doesn’t need to; it will all be in the mission report, assuming Bond actually goes to a debriefing on time.  All the same, Q feels particularly prickly.

“Not that I would have known.  Smashing things really is your forte, isn’t it?  Is there anything you don’t ruin?”

Bond doesn’t respond.  By the time Q notices the length of the silence and thinks to look up, the agent is gone.

Q goes home sometime around midnight.  For the past two nights, he has kept himself awake, tampering with the feeds.  Now, he gives himself a double dose of sedatives and texts R that he’s taking tomorrow off.

(Rohyphenol, otherwise known as flunitrazepam, has a long half life in the body.  It sticks around anywhere between eighteen to twenty-six hours, depending on dosage.  That being the case, it has strong residual effects and does not wear off easily.  The mechanism of action involves the enhancement of gamma-aminobutyric acid at its receptor, resulting in sedation and muscle relaxation.  It’s meant to be taken on a short-term basis for occasional bouts of insomnia.  Overdoses can be fatal.)

((Q considers the bottle.  After some thought, he takes the prescribed dose for his weight class.))

He dreams of bad restaurants and dead bodies, and not even the shock of the imagery can overcome his drug-induced state and wake him to remember to breathe.

* * *

Bond goes through a total of six MI6-sponsored outings without calling into Q-Division once.

M calls Q to his office to ask why their most destructive agent seems to be consuming fewer resources than usual.  Q has no answers, but he suggests that perhaps 007 is finally mellowing out.  M informs him that on Bond’s most recent mission, he got blown halfway to hell and by rights ought to have asked for more equipment or at least a word of advice.  He never hesitated to do so in the past, and M suggests that there could be a certain dynamic at play that’s holding 007 back from calling in.

“What might that be?” Q asks.  In his mind, he’s going over Bond’s latest report from Medical.  Q gets them all now, and he reads them cover to cover if only because what he finds there often changes how he manufactures his weapons.  He turns up a blank and realizes that Bond likely never went to Medical.  If his wounds were that bad, he would have to be treated locally.  Q doesn’t know what medical treatment is like in Algeria, but he’s got a feeling that Bond’s patchwork job is going to mean some new modifications to his stock of weaponry.

M answers, “Age.  He sees the future before him in you, and he doesn’t want to turn to someone younger than him for help.  Perhaps you might assign an older member of your department to assist him on future missions?  I know protocol mandates that you manage all double-0 missions where possible, but I think we might be able to make an exception here.”

Q has even fewer answers to give to that than the question before it, though he gives a nod of assent and moves onto the next topic.

* * *

Not two days later, Bond calls into Q-Division.  Q is busy modifying an Yves Saint Laurent lip gloss for 003, and on Q’s orders one of the older quartermasters in the division takes the call.  

The idea behind the lip gloss is simple enough: with the appropriate toxin in the pigment, 003 can take down targets with an innocuous kiss.  Of course, it isn’t simple at all, because by design 003 needs to have something on underneath the lipstick to prevent it from killing her as well, but it’s all part of the learning process.  Q thinks that he will have a functional model in the next few days.

“Sir.”  Q looks up.  The man is part of Q-Division, but his name doesn’t come immediately to mind.  Q recognizes him as the one he told to handle whatever Bond needed.  “007’s on the line.”

Q waits a moment.  “And?” he asks.  “I told you to handle it.  Do I need to do something about this?”

The older quartermaster’s face is contorted into an uncomfortable grimace.  “He asked for you personally.  Said no one else would do.”

Q curses.  “Of course he did.  Push the feeds to my station, thanks.  Anything I need to know about?”

“He’s in Argentina.  Not in any particular trouble, but it sounds like he’s driving.  He wouldn’t tell me anything.”  

“Very well.  Dismissed.”

Relieved, Q’s subordinate all but flees Q’s desk.  Within minutes, Q’s laptop is alive with 007.

“You know, it is illegal to talk and drive in Argentina.  I doubt M will pay for your ticket if you get pulled over.”

“I missed you, too,” Bond says.

“I’ll remind you that it’s you who hasn’t called in.  Are you terrorizing my subordinates that they feel the need to hand you off to me?” Q demands.

The agent laughs.  “I merely asked for the privilege of your pleasant company over their stuttering inadequacy.  Honestly, Q, hire better techs.”

“They aren’t techs, they’re quartermasters,” Q says, “and they are better.  I manage the best.  It’s you who terrorizes them.  They’re not field agents, 007.  Most of us don’t take well to the double-0 mentality.”

“Which is why I asked for you.”

“Protocol mandates that agents do not request quartermasters,” Q says.  Bond doesn’t respond.  “Aside from that, M doesn’t seem to think you want to work with me at all.  Something about not wanting to work with the latest generation.”

“I’d think asking for you personally rather contradicts that hypothesis, wouldn’t you say?”

Q can’t help the smile.  “Spoken like a true scientist.  Perhaps you missed your calling in Q-Division.  We’ve openings, if you’re interested.”

“When I was promoted to double-0, you were Q-Branch.  Don’t tell me you’ve taken over Accounting to make yourselves a division.”

“Accounting?  Dear me, no, we’ve not taken anyone over.”  Q pauses for effect.  “Unless you count IT, but really, they should never have been separate anyway.”

Bond laughs again.  “They seem to be working much better now.”

“What, IT?” Q asks, confused by the turn of conversation.

“Them, too, I suppose, but no.  I meant the feeds.  I can hear you loud and clear.  Hello, by the way.”

“Hello, 007.  I would hope that the feeds are working.”  Q hesitates.  “It wouldn’t happen to be the case that the feeds haven’t been working these past few times you’ve been out, would it?”

There’s a pause.  It’s long enough that Q begins to read into it before Bond says, “No, the feeds are functioning just fine.  There’s nothing wrong with them, never was.  I’m afraid I’ve been playing with you.  I hope you don’t mind.  On the other matter, I’ve been busy, but, my dear quartermaster, if you missed me that much you ought to have opened the lines yourself.  You know I do miss you when we’re so far away.”

“Save your pseudo-charms for your targets, 007.  All I want to know is if my tech’s working.”

Another pause, then, “Of course.  It’s working perfectly.”

The subsequent radio silence is overwhelming.

* * *

Moneypenny prowls Q-Division with the swagger of a double-0.  Two of Q’s subordinates have already approached him privately to ask if he could, perhaps, do something about the menacing woman with the weaponized stilettos.  

(The quartermasters don’t mention the stilettos, of course, but all it takes is a glance for Q to see that, yes, those are the shoes he built for Moneypenny not long after she came out of fieldwork.  He’s rather proud of just how much damage they can do without sacrificing one millimeter of style.)

Q has told them all to get over it, but that doesn’t stop him from summoning Moneypenny to his desk to find out just why she’s marching around looking ready to commit murder and get away with it.

“I’m sure M didn’t send you down here to terrorize the quartermasters,” Q tells her.  He thinks that he’s finally synthesized a new polymer suitable for the GM-CC drive, and the success has his spirits higher than they’ve been in a long time.

“Who says M sent me anywhere?” Moneypenny says.  She’s not smiling, and Q can feel his own grin fading with each passing nanosecond.

“Well, then, to what do I owe the visit?”

“It’s 007.  Can we talk?”

Q frowns.  “Of course.”  He gestures towards his office.  “By all means.”

She sweeps in before he does, and he locks the door behind him.

“Is there a problem?” Q asks.  There can’t be, at least not a serious one, because otherwise she would have approached him directly rather than waiting for him to take the effort to call her over.  She’s never hesitated to interrupt him before, and this is rather out of character.  Q doesn’t like it.

“Something happened to Bond in Argentina,” Moneypenny says.  Q waits.  “He’s been strange ever since he came back.”

“Really,” Q says.  “Well, he hasn’t returned his equipment, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Oh, he dropped it off with me,” she says, waving a hand.  “It’s in good shape, you’ll be pleased.  Even brought back his gun.  I was going to bring it down later, but I thought, since he’d opened the feeds, he might have said something to you…”

“About what?” Q asks.  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How much do you know about Vesper Lynd?”

Q takes a moment to examine the name.  “Ex-MI6, deceased.  She was the recipient of Bond’s ill-fated affections some time ago.  Died during the last Le Chiffre mission.  Drowning, I seem to remember, or some other unpleasant death.”

Moneypenny nods.  “I wasn’t here for that, but I’m told Bond went around in something of a haze following it.  He fell for her, and he fell hard.  Everyone who’s been here long enough to remember Vesper Lynd seems to think that Bond fell in love with someone over there, in Argentina, and that she died.”

Q shrugs as if the news didn’t faze him.  In truth, he’s busy committing the conversation to memory for when the debriefing report crosses his desk.  He’ll dig up whatever it is.  “I didn’t hear anything about it.  We only spoke briefly, early on in the operation.  He was just driving in.”

“What did he have to say?” Moneypenny asks.  “Did he mention anything?”

“No, he didn’t say a word.  Frankly, I doubt he’d tell me one way or the other.  Do you really think he’d trust me with that sort of thing?”

Moneypenny’s expression is inscrutable.  She sighs, “Maybe not.  Bond doesn’t trust anyone, I suppose.  I just thought, given that you’re his quartermaster…”

Q frowns.  He can’t pull back from snapping, “I’m no one’s quartermaster.  I work with no agent exclusively, regardless of what they seem to think.”

Moneypenny is still looking at him as if he were a particularly tenacious puzzle.  “Does he request you like that?”

Red flags rise in Q’s head.  Protocol is very clear regarding agents requesting quartermasters, and vice versa.  Of course, the latter hasn’t happened, and Bond has always been a special case with regards to the former, but if Bond’s oddities push Q into the realm of thou-shalt-not’s again, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

“No,” Q lies.  “He just acts like that, is all.”

Moneypenny doesn’t buy it, but Q’s lips are sealed.  Long after she’s gone, Q can hear her stilettos clicking against the floors.


	3. Dead Men

There is a hole the size of 001 in the Atlantic ocean.

Of course, there can’t actually be a hole in the ocean.  It would contradict the laws of diffusion.  (Everything balances; left uninhibited, molecules move from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration, eventually reaching the state of dynamic equilibrium.  According to certain sociological and economic principles, people can diffuse, too.  It’s amazing how often people behave like insensate particles, going wheresoever luck and chance take them.)

((Then again, perhaps it’s not so strange after all.  They say fortune favors the brave, but who has that kind of courage other than the powerful and the suicidal?))

The obituary says nothing about cause of death, but Q has read the dossier.  001 had been tailing an American politician with big teeth and loud, brash tendencies.  The politician’s record was clean, though MI6 suspected that his brother was part of a radical white supremacist organization that had been fanning the flames of bigotry during recent elections throughout the Western world.

Halfway through the journey, an unknown assailant opened fire on passengers.  001’s contact on the ship managed to hide, but 001, trying to cover the politician, ended up shot twice.  The momentum, according to the contact, carried the agent over the side of the ship.  The shooter, apparently out of ammunition, came to the edge and jumped overboard as well.  Neither could be located by rescue crew.  

The body count on deck was in the tens.  The contact had asked to be transferred out of fieldwork, and the politician had gone on a publicity campaign to not-so-subtly add that, if he were elected, these “rogue madmen and terrorists” who deemed it fit to destroy the lives of “countless innocent men and women” would not be permitted to carry on.

Q read the dossier until the words regressed into letters.  There was nothing, nothing he could do.  He knew it, and he still knows.  The knowledge doesn’t change the fact that he feels sick and cold and miserable.

He sits in one of the Q-Division labs, shivering next to the canisters of inert gases, wishing not for the first time that all agents were indestructible and that all equipment was infallible and that he himself wasn’t at the epicenter of this madness.

* * *

Q types a line, deletes it, retypes it.  Prose has never been his forte.  Of course, this isn’t really prose, it’s reality.  Frankly, Q has never been very good with that, either.  The screen swims before his eyes.

He decides that he very, very much needs a break.

* * *

Bond finds Q on the MI6 rooftop. 

“You are unwell,” Bond says.  Q’s hands are shaking.  He has a lit cigarette in his hand (his shaking hand) but the smell of the smoke has turned his stomach and he no longer feels up to smoking at all.  He’s out of practice, in more ways than one.

“Don’t you have reports to file?” Q asks. 

“I do, and I did.  I dropped them off at your desk.  You weren’t there.”

“Oh,” Q says dumbly, then oh.  He had deleted that what he’d typed, hadn’t he?  He hadn’t left it sitting out, just a twitch of a mouse away…

“You can’t resign,” Bond says, and yes, he did leave it there.  The symptoms of sleep deprivation echo in Q’s head.  When he opens his mouth, he finds that language has deserted him.  He settles for what he knows is a moronic smile, and he stares across London.  The sun is bright, but not warm.  Q hasn’t been warm for days.  Or perhaps it has been weeks, now.  Time’s gotten away from Q.

“Q?”  Bond is next to him, now.  He’s looking at him, waiting for him to look back.  Q can’t do that, not right now.  There are blue-lipped corpses in Bond’s eyes.

“I’m not ready for this,” Q says. 

“No one is.”

“You are.”

“It’s not like this,” Bond says.  “It’s never like this.  Most of the time, everything is quiet.  Missions are all about waiting, being called back having done nothing.  No bullet wounds, no casualties, no need for fancy equipment or a voice in an ear.  This is rare, and terrible, and Q, it’s not a reason to quit.  Not now.  Look at me.”

Q stares across the city.  The same building appears to be in two different places.  He sees a vision of the future, the changing present, and he does not like it.

“Look at me.”

Q cannot look.

* * *

When Q wakes the morning after Bond found his note, he is staring at the ceiling of one of the bedrooms in MI6 keeps up for agents and staff who can’t make it home.  Bond had insisted that he try to get some sleep and had all but ordered him here.  Now, Q feels heavy and sick, and he’s completely unprepared for the flurry of movement by the door.  He scrambles for his glasses, cursing his poor eyesight, as the door opens.

The intruder is blond and big, and Q thinks he can see blue eyes.

Just as Q slips his glasses the rest of the way on, he hears, “Oh, you’re up.  Thank God, I was starting to think you weren’t going to wake up after all.”

He’s brunet, not blond, and his eyes are green.  Q recognizes neither him nor his voice.

“I’m Larson, by the way” the man supplies helpfully.  “I’m with Five.  The director sent me to check up on you, make sure you got along all right.”  Larson looks around.  “Six always get the nice spaces, don’t they?  Sometimes I think about switching.  Someone said you work in accounting?  Do you want a hand getting back down there?”

It’s not too much of a stretch to think that Larson is referring to M as “the director”.  He could always go down to accounting, wait for Larson to leave, then head over to Q-Division.  Still…

“I’m fine, actually.  I think I’m going to sleep a little more and head home.  I’ve done enough this week to take the weekend off, really.”

Larson frowns.  “It’s Tuesday, Mr. Lewis,” he says.  Q’s stomach drops, though his mind grabs hold of the fake name with zeal.  “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” 

Q decides to stick with some semblance of the truth from here on out.  “You know what,” he says, “I really don’t think so.”

* * *

Q starts out with full intention of getting rest, but after thirty minutes of staring at the ceiling doing nothing, he decides that he can’t take it anymore. 

There’s a secretary in the room next door.  Her face is greener than Hyde Park in spring, and while Larson’s busy nursing her back to health, Q slips back down to Q-Division.  Q is aware that Larson is probably meant to be watching Q, and that Q’s disappearance will likely mean trouble for the man, but Q can’t bring himself to care at the moment.  If MI5 agents lack such discipline that they will try to hit on a woman clearly ill with a stomach virus, they don’t deserve praise.

R doesn’t approve of his presence, but Q has never faced a problem that couldn’t be surmounted by sheer force of will.  If he can just push a little harder, it will all work out.

At least, it would have worked out, and it does, right up until the moment Q receives his summons to M’s office.  Q doesn’t need two guesses to figure out why he’s been called upstairs, and he passes Moneypenny’s desk feeling much like he supposes death row inmates do on their last days.  

(Bitterly, Q thinks that at least they are given sodium thiopental and a chance to sleep.)

Q can tell just by looking at his superior’s face that this battle is a losing one.  M’s eyes are slits in a dough face.  Never a good sign.

“No,” is all he says.  He doesn’t need to elaborate further.  “Company policy.”

“But—“ 

“Much though it behooves me to say it, someone more competent than me hired you, and I’m sure as bloody hell not going to let you walk out that door now.  My final answer is no.  Dismissed.”

* * *

Q sees neither Bond nor Moneypenny for one week following his shortest meeting to date with M.

001 is buried in the binary code Q manipulates with every keystroke.  Q doesn’t believe in ghosts, isn’t sure that he wants to.  He imagines the hordes of the dead as so many voiceless bodies.

(Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale.  The dead do not rise, Q reminds himself.  Under no circumstances do the dead rise.  There is blood, but there is also bleach.) 

((James Bond’s face appears in Q’s mind.  Q reminds himself that Bond was never dead.  Q resolutely does not think of James Bond being dead, though he has not heard from nor seen him for a week and it is entirely possible that he is, in fact, dead.  Q wouldn’t know because he’s been delegating all comms to other quartermasters on the grounds that he has paperwork to file.))

Even so, when Q catches sight of one of his new employees, a man who looks rather like a young version of 001, he retreats to his office.  R finds him dry-heaving into a trashcan and takes him to Medical.  Q makes her swear on her job, on her loyalty to Queen and Country, that she will not tell a soul.

She stands apart from him in the white, sanitary room where all of the doors are locked, her arms hanging limply at her sides.  Q sits on the stretcher, trying not to let the cold of the room chill his exposed back.  He can’t remember when he last got a solid night’s sleep, and his hands shake.  He halfway wishes R would come over and tell him everything will be all right, but the other part of him feels an overwhelming gratitude that she understands his need for space.

Later, long after R leaves, Q considers that she might have been thinking less of him and more of how much work his personal problems seem to create.  The thought triggers another bout of nausea, and he’s ill again.  It’s one thing to matter too much in a position one can’t handle, it’s another thing entirely not to matter at all.

* * *

Against all odds, it’s Bond who comes for him.

“Before you say anything,” Bond says, “the only reason I was told is because R has it on reliable authority that I have no soul.  Apparently this nullifies any oath you made her swear.  Come on.”

In lieu of answer, Q says, “I can’t do this." 

Bond doesn’t so much as hesitate.  “Quite right.  Sitting in a white box more reminiscent of a refrigerator than anything else isn’t something anyone can do for any period of time.  Why do you think I dodge Medical?  Come on.”

It’s the second iteration that makes Q look up, see the proffered hand.  He scrutinizes Bond’s face to try to see what the lies under the surface.  He’s tired to the point that he can’t tell if the expression Bond wears is genuine or fabricated to suit the event, but he finds he doesn’t care.  Q pauses, then realizes that he honestly has nothing to lose.  He already feels like his life has fallen to pieces.  Q deduces that, in the worst case scenario, Bond makes some sort of glib remark and leaves him in Medical and Q would be no better or worse off than before the agent arrived.  Q grabs Bond’s hand.

Bond’s grip is gentler than it has any right to be.  Something lifts in Q’s stomach, and he decides that he’ll think on it later, when his eyes aren’t full of myodesopsia and apparitions.

Q finds that he’s not quite steady enough to walk.  Bond does not have an issue with this: one of his arms loops under Q’s legs at the knees while the other cradles his back, and they’re off.  Q finds that being carried out of the building by one of the most dangerous men in England is slightly humiliating, but it’s nothing if not comfortable.  Q tucks his head in and breathes.

He doesn’t know what Bond bribed (or, more likely, threatened) Q-Division with, but every single camera from Medical to the front door is turned to face the walls.  From his pocket, Bond’s phone rings within an inch of its life.  Q reaches into Bond’s pocket to see who it is.

“M’s calling,” he says.  To his own ears it sounds as if he speaks from underwater.

Bond makes a noise.  “Of course he is.  Silence that for me, would you?” Q does so and puts it back in Bond’s pocket just as they reach the doors.  For some reason, none of the security guards seem to be around. 

Bond loads him into the passenger seat of a personal car that’s parked out front and drives them away.  Between the cameras and general lack of people, no one sees them leave.  Q has never been off of the grid before, has never wanted to, but he thinks that there’s never been a better time to give it a try.

* * *

He briefly considers the feeling in his stomach as Bond drives him away from MI6.

Later, he tells himself, staring at storefronts and houses as they flash past.  Later.

* * *

Bond sets Q up in his room.  Bond doesn’t say outright that it’s his room, but Q can see the signs.  Every other space Q sees in passing oozes 007.  The lounge is sleek, cold, and superficially homey.  There are chairs and tables and God, as if Bond ever had anyone over, as if anyone so much as knew where he lived other than M and a handful of others who had better things to do than drop by the home of an aging double-0.

(The lack of life shows, too.  Or, rather, it smells: each room stinks of stale air and alcohol.) 

The bedroom, though, is Bond.  It’s nearly Spartan, and very clean.  The flat itself is quite high up, and the bedroom has a window facing out over the city.  A chair sits beside it with a reading lamp and a side table.  Q thinks something smells vaguely like lavender, but he’s fairly certain that’s the sleep deprivation talking.  At any rate, it’s a completely different space from the rest of the flat, and Bond has put him in it.

“Am I special now?” Q blurts.  The refined filter between his brain and his mouth has disintegrated with lack of sleep.  He curses himself and his loose tongue as fear and guilt and other irrational emotions well in his stomach.  If he opens his mouth again, he’s afraid they’ll come pouring out.  He warned Bond that he wasn’t cut out for this job, and now he’s proving it.

Still, Bond smiles.  “Very much so,” the agent says, and damn it all if it doesn’t sound sincere.

Bond tucks him into bed, perhaps a little gingerly, if Q’s being honest.  HIs mind is floating on clouds because the bed belonging to 007-- no, to Bond, this room stands entirely apart from 007--has no right to feel so soft, to smell so good.  It should be sweaty and sticky and smelling of sex, but it’s not, and Q is grateful for that and so much more.

Bond turns out the light.  The door to the room closes, and Q lets out a sigh.

“Sleep, my dear quartermaster.”

Q’s glasses are on the nightstand — did Bond take them off? — but Q doesn’t have to sit up to realize that Bond is still in the room.  He hears the agent walk to the chair by the window and take a seat.

Rationally, Q knows that falling asleep in the dark with a double-0 agent not a handful of meters away is, by definition, a terrible idea.  In this case it stands as an exceptionally bad decision as Bond in particular has a long and largely negative track record when it comes to keeping alive those who find their way into his bed.

However, those people usually haven’t been effectively kidnapped from MI6, and they’re usually not sleeping in James Bond’s bed as opposed to their own or a hotel bed.  They haven’t been tucked in, and taken care of, and given such a promise as Bond has offered.

Because it is a promise.  Q might not know just what Bond’s promise entails, but he knows there is one.  Bond doesn’t do this for people.  Bond thinks that Q can do this, be the quartermaster for MI6.  It both excites and frightens him.

In the end, neither sensation wins out.  Bond’s orders to sleep overtake Q, and he drifts off.


	4. London

Q wakes in the cold sweat that he’s experienced nearly every night since taking on his position as head of Q-Division.  The corpses in his dreams have taken on a more active role lately, and now they smother him with cold, bony hands, dragging him to the bottom of the ocean.  In his dreams, Q can see 001 down there, covered in barnacles.  His suit is faded and torn, but, biology be damned, his gunshot wounds still bleed and rigor mortis refuses set in.  When he opens his mouth to speak, ink shoots forth, stinging and blinding.

There’s a hand on Q’s back and one on his right arm.  “007?” Q asks, voice groggy.  It’s more than he dares to believe, and yet—  

The noise of assent behind him serves as confirmation.  Bond rubs circles into his back, deviating the design every so often such that Q can’t focus his mind on a single pattern.  The hand on his arm holds him upright, though Q finds himself leaning steadily into the warmth that is Bond.

“Nightmares,” Q says.  Bond has not asked for an explanation, and all things considered Q and Bond have no business finding themselves in this situation at all, but Q finds himself talking anyway.  “I’m not cut out for this.”

Bond’s chin settles beside Q’s left clavicle.  The superior fibers of Q’s trapezius contract and relax against Bond’s skin.

“It’s not the spying, or even the killing,” Q says.  He’s aware that he’s blabbering, offering more information about himself than anyone ever should, especially considering his audience is a double-0.  “Killing doesn’t bother me, not really.  It’s the losses—there’s a difference.  There’s a difference between a Yakuza and 001, between civilians and targets.  There’s the people we care about, and then there’s—there’s everything else.”

Q feels Bond shift behind him.  “That wasn’t your fault.”  Bond’s voice is neither sultry nor deep, merely quiet and steady.  “None of these deaths rest on you.”  Q shivers, and Bond pulls him closer.

“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse,” Q admits.  “In any case, you’re wrong.”

They lay in silence.  The lack of sound makes Q nervous, but Bond merely holds him close, as if Q were a particularly loved blanket and not a near-complete stranger.

Because that’s what they are, really: strangers thrown together by circumstance who never truly get to know each other, but trust each other enough to function as if they did.  It makes Q sick to think of it.  You don’t realize how precious it is to get to know someone fully, and to have them know you in return, until you’re contractually obligated to forsake that privilege.

Still, none of that changes the fact that Bond is an absolute rock behind him.  As Q’s breaths even out again, Bond’s arms come around to wrap around his torso, encasing him.  Q imagines that this is what being hugged by a stone would feel like.  A very warm, only mostly solid stone with a very strong pulse.  Q finds he does not mind.

Here, at this precise moment, he is safe.  The most dangerous man in England has him surrounded, and nothing and no one can touch Q without going through 007.  Perhaps there’s something more to that predator-attraction theory than Q initially thought, not that Q is feeling particularly attracted to anything at the moment.

Entirely involuntarily, Q falls back to sleep.

* * *

In the morning, Q awakes to the smell of coffee and the realization of his own stupidity.

He’s sprawled across Bond’s bed.  In the light of the morning and after a good night’s sleep, Q can see everything clearly.  Outside, the sky outside is bright but clouded over.  Within Bond’s room, the bed is obscenely comfortable.  The room most definitely smells of lavender, and Q determines that it’s the sheets themselves.  They’re nice linens, likely pressed before last night, and Q feels a twinge of guilt to be the one to muss them up.

The bed around him is cold save where he settled in the night, but there’s a Bond-shaped indentation in the comforter just beside Q.

Speaking of the agent, Q can hear him walking around the flat.  The smell of coffee hits Q again, and his stomach rumbles.  He’s still fully dressed, and he smells, and all in all he’s not sure what to do about any of it.  Bond picks this particular moment to come in.

“Morning,” he says.

“Good morning,” Q says.  “Listen—“

“You’re taking the day off.”

Q blinks twice, then asks, “What?”

“R and I managed to agree on something.  It’s the only thing more impressive than M and I agreeing, I think, so you ought to pay attention.  Unless you feel like disobeying a direct order, you’re not to touch MI6 business today.”

Q can feel his eye twitching, and he rubs both to massage the frazzled muscles.  “The world must be ending.”

“It will if you run yourself into the ground.”

Q looks up at Bond and finds no mockery there.  “Thanks,” Q says.

“Any time,” Bond replies.  “There’s a shower through that door.  All of my clothes are rather too large for you, I suspect, but we’ll make do.”

“I’m not going back to my place?”  Q is deliberately vague.  Very few people know where he lives, and he likes it that way.  Regardless, Bond doesn’t respond.  “007—“

“No MI6 business.”

Q grimaces.  “You’re MI6.  Does that mean I’m not supposed to talk to you, either?”

Bond frowns now.  “I’m on active leave for the moment.”

“You took a vacation?”  Bond shrugs.  “Why?”

“It was necessary.”

Q takes a moment to process this.  “M made you take a leave.  Why?  To babysit me?  I may still have spots, as you seem to love to remind me, but I am an adult.”

“Did I say anything?” Bond asks.  “Don’t get defensive, Q.  M wanted someone to watch you, and I wanted to take a break.  The two happened to coincide nicely.”

“So you’re going to spend your vacation stalking me?”

“At this rate, I’m going to spend my vacation bickering with you.  Get showered.  We’ll talk about this after.”

* * *

As it happens, Bond has next to nothing in his flat other than bullets, coffee, and whiskey.  Though it’s already half ten on a weekday, Bond insists on going out for breakfast.

Bond takes him someplace that doesn’t take reservations and appears to have a line as long as the Thames itself, yet they have a table to themselves in a relatively quiet green courtyard within seconds of arrival.  They sit in the shade, and Bond pulls out Q’s chair before he sits down.  Bond insists on ordering for both of them, not so much as allowing Q to see the menu.  It doesn’t take a genius to see why: Q recognizes almost everyone around him from popular media and politics, not to mention his own line of work.  He knows, from the absorption of IT, that MI5 has wiretaps on at least half of the people he can see, to say nothing of those he can’t.

In short, this place is pricey.  It’s not beyond his salary, but it could never become an everyday expense.  Q fidgets in Bond’s clothes.  Though they’re nearly the same height, Bond is larger than Q in nearly every other way.  Q’s never been one for physical appearances, but given present company, he feels rather out of place.

Bond gets French-pressed coffee and lobster and scrambled eggs for himself and a pot of Earl Grey and shakshuka for Q.  Bond is charming: he knows when to eat and when to strike a conversation, and where to steer it so that it never becomes awkward or silent.  Q finds himself relaxing and talks loosely about whatever comes to mind.  Bond never mentions MI6, and Q never brings it up.  Instead, they cover an odd range of subjects ranging from Tunisian vegetation to stances on cats.  In the process, Q discovers that Bond hates tea.

(He loves coffee, though.  When Q accuses him of being more American than English, Bond replies that, far from American, Bond likes his coffee French.  With a wink, he adds that there’s a great deal to be learned from the French.  Q sighs to keep the flush from his face.)

((He does not show relief that Bond doesn’t call him on his slip-up.  Scotland is never mentioned.))

When they leave and Bond slips Q’s borrowed coat over the quartermaster’s shoulders, Q has the distinct impression that he’s just been taken out on a date.  The feeling in his stomach returns.

Later, he says to himself.  Later.

* * *

Bond takes him around London.

Q knows the exact geographical location and building specifications of nearly everywhere they visit, but he’s never actually been there.  Bond takes him past Buckingham Palace and Westminster Palace, St. James and Hyde’s Park.  They walk, and Q is glad that all of Bond’s jackets seem to be impervious to cold because there’s a chill that rolls in around two and refuses to leave.

Q finds that Bond not only knows a great deal about the city but is more than willing to share his information.  He talks, and Q listens, and the agent smiles just enough for Q to forget, just for a few hours, that he’s walking around with a trained killer.

When Q remembers, they’re in the middle of Hyde Park, just before a fountain.  It hits him with all of the force of a freight train.  He knows exactly what this is, what Bond’s doing, and he kicks himself for not realizing it sooner.  After all, Q has seen this play out on several occasions, omniscient as he is with regards to Bond’s business over the comms.  He smiles, and it must look terribly pitiful because Bond notices and stops.  Q can’t remember what he was saying, but it had been charming and funny and Q wishes that he were anyone else, that he might enjoy this without having to break the spell.

But he isn’t anyone else, and he has to ask, so he does.  “What do you want, Bond?”  Bond tilts his head ever so slightly but does not respond.  Q laughs, just a little, involuntary noise at the back of his throat.

Finally, Bond asks, “What do you mean?”

“You want something.  You always do this when you want something.”  Bond waits, and Q says, “You don’t even know you do it, do you?  When you want something from a mark, you do this.  You’re charming, you’re accommodating.  Even when they’re boring or ugly, you make them feel as if they’re the only person who matters.”

“Q—“

“And it’s all to get something,” Q continues.  “Whether it’s information, a lay, what have you.  You took time off to babysit me, so obviously M wants something of the variety you happen to specialize in getting.  So what is it he sent you for?  What do you want?”

Bond’s lips are a line.  “You’re no mark, Q.  M didn’t ask me to do anything.”

“Maybe, maybe not.  If not, then does this have anything to do with Argentina?”

There’s something of an unwritten rule in law that stipulates that you should never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.  Q knows he’s just broken it, but as he watches Bond stiffen, he thinks he made the best possible move.  

“Argentina,” Bond repeats.

“So something did happen.”

“According to whom?”

Q shrugs.  “I’ve heard that something traumatic happened to you in Argentina while you were studiously ignoring Q-Division.  I’m assuming you started to care about some tart what got herself blown up.  I don’t remember any bombs in the final report, but you get the idea.  What is this, some sort of twisted atonement?  Or do you want something else?”

“No— That is—”

“No to what?”

“All of it, Q.  Listen—”

“Then what is this?  The fact is, this, all of this, is 007,” Q says.  “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Bond is silent.

“Does James Bond even exist anymore, beyond the name?” Q asks, and it’s a stupid question because he’s asking someone who could break him in two whether he has anything real left in him or whether he’s just artifice, and by definition that is a terrible idea.

(Not only that, but Q’s asked a question he does know the answer to.  James Bond as a human being exists.  Q’s seen the evidence in Bond’s room.  There’s something underneath the swagger and the guns.  For the moment, though, Q doesn’t want to face it because he doesn’t know what it means.)

Bond meets Q’s eyes like a challenge.  “I’m not sure,” he says, and damn it all if Q doesn’t think the agent means it.

Q’s stomach does that turn again, and it’s so much more insistent now that he can’t entirely ignore it.  Q sighs and leans into Bond.  Bond has the good graces to wrap his arms around him.

(Pity, his mind tells him.  If it’s not a job for M, then that’s what this is, what Bond is doing.  Q both loves and hates it.)

Bond says something, and Q has to ask for him to repeat it because a flock of doves decides to take off just beside them and all Q can hear are their coos and the flapping of wings disappearing into a rapidly darkening sky.

“Do you want James Bond to exist outside of 007?” Bond asks again, and Q’s stomach hurls itself off of a ninety-storey building.  What is Bond asking?  Q can’t pin his finger on it.  Bond looks hopeful, and sad, and older than any double-0 has a right to be.  Q doesn’t know what Bond’s looking for, but whatever it is, and what it does to Bond, terrifies him.

His lips twist ineffectually before his brain settles on, “I’m not sure.”

“But you might?”

Bond’s eyes are bright and cold and he looks for all the world as if he wants something, something he doesn’t believe Q might give.

“But I most certainly might,” Q agrees, if only because he can’t know for sure without knowing what the existence of a James Bond beyond 007 in Q’s life might entail.

Bond’s winning smile is worth nearly all of the uncertainty.


	5. Loops

It takes two days and an emphatic phone conversation with M before Q is cleared to return to MI6.  

It was quiet while he was away.  R helped the new quartermasters handle ops with agents (not double-0 section) in Yemen and in Hong Kong, both of which went off without too many hitches.  Other operations included standard deep-cover communiqués, but nothing truly special.  Agents in Yemen, Syria, Liberia, and Iran reported the day before Q returned.  

In short, when Q steps into Q-Division, the world is much the same as it has been when he left: turbulent and poised on the tipping point between the abyss and an uneasy peace, but still holding.

Begrudgingly, Q admits that taking time off ultimately stands as a good decision, particularly because nothing and no one (including MI6) was hampered in the process.  

(If they don’t need him on a regular basis, do they need him at all?  Q’s thoughts run in circles.)

Q doesn’t know if Bond sees him spiraling out of control again, but the agent brings him tea and gets him set up at his desk before pulling out a book with a well-worn cover.  It’s something by John le Carré.

“Are you serious?” Q asks.

“It’s a free country,” Bond retorts.

“I stand by my position that you’re too Americanized for your own good,” Q says.  “You’re reading.”

“Believe it or not, my dear quartermaster, I am fully capable of understanding the English language.  And freedom isn’t limited to the United States of America, even if Americans seem to think so.  Besides that, I have it on good authority that Americans don’t read.”

“It’s your day off.”

“One of them, yes.”

“And you’re going to spend it sitting here, reading.”  

Bond gives a half smile.  “That’s right.”

Q has many things he could say to that, each of them expressing disbelief and perhaps just a touch of awe and gratitude.  He sips his tea and says, “Well, then pull up a chair.  It won’t do to have you standing there all day.”

Bond’s words return to him as the agent snags a chair and sinks into it, propping his feet on the corner of Q’s desk.  Bond thinks he can do this, even though Q disagrees.

Q sits down and pulls up the files for an operation in Jordan.  He adjusts the parameters on the program he uses to get into CCTV around the world while he connects.  Just as a young woman in a burka appears on his screen, the comms activate.

“Hello, Miss Aziz?  It’s Q.  I’ll be your point person if you need to call in at any point during this operation.  We don’t anticipate that this will be difficult, but I’d like to run through a few things with you before you head off, and, as always, I will be here if you require assistance.  Now, let’s get started…”

* * *

“Q?”

Q smiles slightly.  “003,” he says.

“What is a Lofstrom loop?”

After a pause, Q says, “A hypothetical system for propelling relatively small objects into space without the aid of rockets using principles of electromagnetism.  Why?”

“Lau is obsessed with it, it seems.  What do you make of this?”

003 moves her watch such that Q can see through the pinhole camera.  For now, it’s all Q’s got in terms of visual.  It’s two in the afternoon in London and nine in Beijing, and Q leans forward to better see the picture.  003 is looking into the files of the son of the leader of Lau Aircraft Industry Corporation.  Q can see a rather nicely drawn schematic labelled in neat Chinese of a loop up above the atmosphere of the earth.

Nice and neat, but ultimately useless.

“Nothing at all.  At least, it’s not really a practical investment.  All current models are nonfunctional,” Q says, “or at least impractical.  The economic cost alone is nearly impossible to shoulder given current events, to say nothing of technological hurdles.  If they’re looking into it seriously, they’re fools.”

003 begins to copy down the plans anyway.  Q’s been working on his tiny micro-CT, but progress is slow, just as predicted.  He’s beginning to think that he has to use something other than x-rays, in particular some form of light that would register the presence of ink, but that could require a certain type of ink, and that’s too easy to get around.  It’s quite complicated, and it doesn’t help that M only just cleared the plans for go-ahead.  (He had the audacity to ask whether or not it didn’t make more sense to have agents take pictures with their phones.  Pictures.  With their phones.  M honestly thought that taking pictures in a device linked to the internet didn’t pose an inherent security hazard.  Q nearly lost it then and there, though he had the presence of mind not to threaten to resign again.)

Q reaches for his mug for lack of anything better to do and takes a sip.  It’s been sitting on his desk since this morning, and he’s fully prepared a slug of cold, bitter tea.

It’s hot.  It’s hot, and strong, but not bitter.  It hasn’t been sitting there that long.

Q blinks and looks around.  His quartermasters are working diligently and deliberately not looking near his workstation.  It doesn’t take long to pinpoint why: Bond is lounging in what has become his chair at the side of Q’s desk, absorbed in a different book.  Q notices that  he’s started yet another one, totaling three that he’s read since Q came back.  Though Q has acclimatized to the perpetual presence of the double-0, his department has been reeling, and he’s gotten more surreptitious emails in the past twenty-four hours alone asking if he could please, please relocate the agent, than he has during his entire tenure as quartermaster, including the time Moneypenny decided to lurk like a shark.

“Thank you,” Q says.

“Any time,” Bond replies.  He sets his book aside and folds his arms.

“All right, I’m on my way out,” 003 says.  “Should be easy, but I’ll keep the feeds open just in case.  Looks like you’ll have all of your tech back in one piece.”

Q thanks her and leans back, muting his side of the comm.  Bond is watching him.  Q recognizes the agent’s expression as one of curiosity, and that recognition sparks a thought: Q can’t remember when he first started recognizing Bond’s facial expressions as anything other than masks.

“What is it?” Q asks.

“I wouldn’t have guessed 003 to be a nice one.”

“Pardon me?”

Bond shrugs, then says, “She’s a menace at the firing ranges.  M told me he lives in fear of the day she decides to poison his cognac.”

Q coughs a laugh.  “That doesn’t sound like 003.”

“Doesn’t it?” Bond asks.  Q looks at Bond in confusion.  “The 003 I know is quiet and dangerous.  She’s not one for politesse or kindness, but rather a kind of silent seduction.  I don’t think she’s ever been on any side but her own.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Q shrugs.  “I know how she works in the field.  I have to outfit her to her advantages.  Still, how she conducts her fieldwork hardly stands as a testament to how she is as a person.”

“Is it true that you made her poisoned lipstick?”

It takes every ounce of self-control Q possesses not to grin.  “Why, care to find out?”

Bond’s tongue crosses his bottom lip.  “For the sake of self-preservation, I’ll say no.”

“Good answer.”

Bond switches the way his legs are crossed.  “Still,” he says.

“Still.”

“She’s polite to you.”

Q thinks his eyebrows might have migrated to his hairline.  “You’re really hung up on that, aren’t you?”

“You should never trust a double-0 agent.  I thought M told you that.”

“What, should I shoo you out of here, then?”

That gives Bond pause.  Q can watch several expressions take hold on Bond’s face at once, and though he ought to look away to give the man a moment to compose himself, he doesn’t.

“I suppose you should,” Bond says, speaking softly.

Q watches him for another long moment before turning his attentions back to the monitor.  “Well, too bad,” Q says.  003 is already in the streets, making her way to the extraction site.  In Q’s peripheral vision, Bond appears to shift back and forth before settling back into the chair.

Bathroom breaks aside, they stay that way until the end of Q’s shift.

* * *

“The GM-CC drive,” Q says, pushing the piece of equipment forward.

M picks it up and turns it over.  “What’s it stand for, again?”

“Gestalt machina for clandestine copies.  I’m having a team work on a different model that could erase or ultimately replace everything it copies on the original source, but we need more time for that one.”

“I see you’ve changed the casing.  Does it still work the same way?”  M hands the drive back.

“Absolutely.  The old casing was considered a safety hazard.”

M taps his desk.  “I seem to remember 007 field-testing the prototype.  Did something happen?”

“No.”

“Then why was it considered a hazard?”

“The metal could conduct heat.”  M remains quiet, but he looks like someone just told him that the world is flat, not round.  Slowly, Q says, “It got hot.”

“I see,” M says finally.  The look on his face only serves to convince Q that M’s missing something, although he can’t put his finger on what could possibly be so obtuse.   In the end, M gives the drive the go-ahead for production, though, and that’s all Q cares about.

* * *

“Is the coast clear?” Moneypenny asks.

“Of what?” Q responds.  Other than his micro-CT, he doesn’t have a major project in the works, and he can’t decide if the free time makes him happy or jittery.

“Of double-0s.  There’s a rumor that one of them’s been following you like a lost puppy.”

“I thought he was an old dog to you.”

“So it is 007 that’s been stalking the halls, is it?  I might have guessed.”

Q puts down his laptop, if only because he won’t be getting anything done so long as Moneypenny is here.  “007 has been down here most days, yes.  His vacation is over, however, and he’s back in the field.  He’s in Morocco and due back tomorrow morning.”

Moneypenny’s smile is sharp enough to cut diamonds.  “He spent his vacation with you?”

“It would appear so.”

Q does not mention that he well and truly spent all of his vacation with Q.  It was discreet, but Bond waited for Q to leave MI6 each night.  Q had argued against it on grounds of propriety, but Bond had won out.  Each night, the agent drove him back to his flat (not Q’s home), where they got dinner and slept.  Bond had Q arrange to have some of his belongings brought over “in the interim”, as Bond repeatedly said, and that was that.  They coexisted rather easily, all things considered.  Bond read or lurked or watched the world go by while Q fiddled with his laptop, coding snippets of programs until his vision swam.  Most of the time, they didn’t even talk, at least not to one another.  Bond fielded several calls, and though Q got only one, he was known to talk to his tablet, so it wasn’t completely silent.

Q doesn’t mention that they slept in the same bed for the duration of that time, too.  Bond slept on top of the covers, just far enough away that Q could be assured that Bond meant nothing untoward.  His nightmares came and went, only to come back full force two nights before Bond was sent back out.  Each time, Bond went through the same process, rubbing his back, holding him as if he were something precious, something that Bond needed to keep safe.

All throughout that time, thinking back on it, Q realizes that he didn’t see the double-0 façade: there were no charming smiles, no easy conversation, no nothing.  Q doesn’t know what to make of it.

On top of it all, Q most certainly does not mention that he hasn’t been able to sleep, or eat, or function outside of his role as quartermaster since Bond left.

Instead, in silence he watches R materialize beside Moneypenny, one hand outstretched.

“You earned it,” Moneypenny says to her.  “My purse is upstairs.  Grab a drink after this?”

“Now, hold on,” Q is saying, but neither woman appears to pay him the slightest bit of attention.


	6. Take-out

“I’m telling you,” Tanner is saying, “it’s got to be a set-up.  I think M’s up to something.”

“Just because there’s been no work on any part of the Tube in two days,” Q says, struggling to enunciate around a mouthful of lo mein, “doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy.”  

It’s late, and everyone in Q-Division has gone home or else left the immediate premises.  The night crew will be coming in soon, but if they come now they’ll have to be sworn to secrecy.  

Q and Tanner have each commandeered a desk to sit on.  Tanner lets his legs hang over the edge, but Q has pulled his in, folding himself into something of a human pretzel.  Tanner brought beer and Chinese takeout on Q’s request, and they’ve been sitting and talking for the better part of an hour.

“So you believe in miracles?” Tanner asks.  “Because that’s bloody well what it is if M didn’t do something.”

“I believe that, occasionally, technology does do what it’s supposed to,” Q argues.  “Plus, what would M even do?”

“I’m sure I could manage something, but if anyone were to be helping the Tube run better I’d look to you first.  Everything seems to work better after you fiddle with it, or so I’ve gathered.”

Both Tanner and Q freeze, then turn to look to the back of the room.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Tanner says desperately.

“It’s exactly what it looks like,” Q says.  He’s beyond desperation, and if M’s going to sack him, so be it.

M shakes his head and smiles, then gestures at the Chinese food.  “I wouldn’t suppose you ordered extra, did you?”

Very soon, M is propped in a chair between the two desks, feet up on one, pensively chewing General Tso’s chicken.  “While I do enjoy your company,” Q says, poking at his lo mein with his chopsticks, “was there anything in particular you came to see me for?  It’s rather late, and it’s rare enough that you come down here anyway.”

M shrugs and tears off another piece of meat.  “Looking for that one,” M says, gesturing at Tanner.  “No one saw him leave, and Eve wasn’t here to confirm that he’d made it out all right.”  M smiles a little, then adds, “Of course, we do trust you to get out of the building.  It’s just the principle of the thing.”

Q laughs, if only because Tanner looks like he’s been dragged over hot coals.  “Well, I made him come down, so you have me to blame for that,” Q says.  “I needed someone sane to talk to.”

“If you want sane,” Tanner says, regaining composure, “I think you’re in the wrong line of business.”

“Well aware, thank you,” Q replies.  “Even so.  Everyone today appears to have gone mad.”

M’s face is begging explanation, and though Q doesn’t particularly want to tell the story again, he does.

“A bet?” M asks.  “Eve and R set up a bet about you and 007?”

“They seem to think—“ Q starts, then realizes that he’s not exactly sure what they think at all.  “To be honest, I’m not sure what they think,” he rephrases, “but R bet Moneypenny a solid that 007 would shadow me on my time off.”

“Well, color me surprised,” M says.  His tone of voice indicates that he is anything but.

“Not you, too,” Q protests.  “Tanner said it made sense, too, but no.  With all due respect, I think you’re both a bit touched in the head for it.”

“I say it makes sense because it does,” Tanner says.  He’s got a bowl of dim sum in his lap, and Q can see a rapidly-setting stain on the collar of his shirt from where sauce has rolled down his chin.  Like the good colleague that he is, he says nothing.

“No, it doesn’t,” Q says.  He shifts his feet when he feels one of his toes going numb.  “None at all.  Why would he request time off in the first place?  I’ll be honest, I thought you’d made him do it.  He said you wanted someone to shadow me,” Q says to M.

“I considered having someone shadow you,” M admits, “but after you pulled one over on Larson I figured it was better that you manage for yourself.  007’s request for time off caught me off guard.  I didn’t see the connection until I was informed that Q-Division had been threatened with bodily harm if they didn’t help him break you out of Medical.”

Tanner raises his bottle.  “I’ll drink to that,” he says.  “To everyone 007 has caught off guard.”

“You mean the world?” Q suggests.

“Don’t say that,” M says to Tanner, even as he lifts his bottle, “you sound like an old man.”

Tanner shrugs.  “I might sound like one, but he dresses like one,” he says, pointing to Q, “and he’s not old, so there.”

“Was that supposed to mean something?” Q asks.  Against his better judgment, he drinks to the toast.  He’s not a lightweight, at least not when it comes to beer, but now he’s drinking with the person who effectively amounts to his boss in addition to the Chief of Staff on company time in Q-Division for all to see, and he’s beginning to wonder just how good of an idea this really is.

“There’s only one explanation for it,” M says, “and I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it.”

Q points at himself, and M nods.  “What, for 007’s penchant for sneaking up on people?  I have it on good authority that he’s been doing that since before either of us started working with him.  I do believe it’s in his job description.”

“No,” M says, waving a hand, “the fact that his time off coincided with your leave of absence.”  He pauses long enough that Q thinks he’s supposed to say something, then, “Actually, I believe I’ve made a bit of an assumption.  It’s that you have noticed, and you’re not interested.”

Q opens his mouth, but Tanner’s saying, “That’s terrible, it makes 007 sound like some sort of a lost dog trailing someone who doesn’t care.  I might not be overly fond of him, being what he is and all that, but I still.  You’re not that cold, are you, Q?”

M says, “Perhaps he’s not lost.  He’s certainly old.  I’ve been telling him that the double-0 position is meant for a younger crew, but he simply won’t listen.”

Tanner makes an understanding face, and Q’s left with his jaw hanging loose looking between the two of them.

“What?” Tanner asks.

“What just happened?” Q says.  His voice most certainly does not crack.

M studies him for a moment, then says, “Good God, man, you really don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” Q demands.

“Yes, what doesn’t he know?”

All heads turn to the back of the room yet again.  Bond is lounging in the doorframe.  He smiles like the cat what got the cream.

“007,” Q says.  “You’re not supposed to be back until 0800 tomorrow.”

“I caught an earlier flight,” Bond says.  His smile is unabashedly genuine and utterly predatory.  Q tries looking anywhere other than Bond, only to find both Tanner and M watching him meaningfully.

“You’re an idiot,” Tanner concludes suddenly.

“I’m hardly an idiot,” Q replies, cross.  He’s the only one who doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, everyone seems to know it, and he doesn’t like it.

“He’s right,” M says, “but really you’re both idiots.”  He makes to stand up, and gestures for Tanner to do the same.  “Come on, we can finish this upstairs.”

“Sir,” Tanner says quickly, hopping off the desk.  He sends a grin to Q.

“M, did you have business down here?” Bond is asking.  Q’s still unsuccessfully trying to piece together what’s going on.

“No,” M replies.  “I just heard that there were drinks.”

“Don’t you have your own stash up in your office?” Bond asks smoothly.  “Assuming you’re not still concerned 003 has laced it with something nasty.”

M shrugs.  “Do you really think she would?” he asks.  “At any rate, not that I would expect you to understand, but it’s always rather dismal drinking alone.”  To Tanner he says, “Come along, now.  I think we’ve much to talk about.”

The door to Q Division slides shut behind them.  Q’s noodles are still hot, and he rests the container in his lap to interlace his fingers.

“007,” he says.  “Tell me you have a reason to be down here.  I’m getting the feeling that there are rather ridiculous rumors about us flying around, and this encounter probably won’t help.”

“Afraid of rumors, Q?” Bond asks.  He hasn’t stopped smiling, though it’s lost its predatory quality.  It reminds Q of the smile Bond gave him when Q told him he’d be interested in seeing a James Bond separate from 007.

“Afraid?” Q repeats.  “No.  However, if they compromise the workplace, they become a detriment.”

Bond comes to the edge of the desk Q has perched himself atop and leans against it.

“And if they compromise nothing?”

“Then I suppose I have nothing to complain about.”  He tilts his head.  “So long as it’s nothing socially or emotionally damning, of course.”

“Of course.  But you already know.”

Bond’s watching him now.  Q can feel it, as if he’s being dissected under a microscope.  He’s still trying to piece together what he’s supposed to know.

“I don’t know how you do that,” Q says finally, “but frankly it’s unnerving.”

“What’s that?”

“How you watch people, as if they’re insects that you are in the process of pulling apart.”

Bond’s smile widens marginally.  “You’re hardly an insect.”

“So glad I escape that class of animals.  Do I still make the arthropod phyla, or do I get to be something else?”

Q makes to hop down from the desk, but Bond blocks him.  Q sits very, very still as Bond traces a carotid artery down to the base of his neck, then to the top of his torso.  He remembers what M, the old M, told him when she had him meet Bond at the gallery.

“I’ll be frank,” she said, “he’ll probably oscillate between insulting you and trying to seduce you.”

“Hardly an effective set of tactics,” Q said.

M had waved a hand.  “He won’t know what to do with you so he’ll try everything.  The man’s a bloody menace.  Use that to your advantage.  You’re part of the new generation of MI6.  Don’t give him an inch.  With any luck, you won’t be working with him again.”

Q comes back to reality when Bond says, “Arthropods have segmented torsos.  Yours appears to be entirely whole.”

Q gets it now.  There’s the tone of voice, the look—the agent’s actions should have set of more alarm bells earlier, too.  Frankly, Q’s surprised he didn’t get it earlier.  Maybe he is getting stupid, as if he needed another terrifying thought to keep him awake at night.  His new knowledge settles in his throat first, then sinks to his stomach before rolling over his skin.  All several hundred billion of his nerves send off action potentials at the same time, and the result is a full bodied shiver.

Gingerly, Q slides off of the back of the desk, away from Bond.  He can see the exact moment one of Bond’s many masks slides into place.

“What is this?” Q asks.  He knows, but he has to hear it.  This evening has gone from pleasant to surreal in less time than it takes to blink.

Bond looks away first.  “Q.  I thought you...”

Q doesn’t know what to do.  He’s never known what to do in situations like these.  He’s never had a serious relationship, or even a not-serious relationship.  Work’s always been more important, or school or whatever else he was doing.  Q has never understood people well enough to get close to them.

The doors to Q-Division slide open, and Q can hear the chatter of the quartermasters of the midnight crew.  As they come in, Bond leaves.

“Q, was that 007?” the one who looks like 001 asks.  “Were you having a party down here without us?”

Q looks at the now-cold container of Chinese food and his empty beer bottle.  He pitches them in the trash and says, “You know how to reach me if anything goes wrong this evening.  Good night.”


	7. Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The key, Q finds, is other people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To note: when I first saw Skyfall, I was under the impression that Ronson was Boothroyd, and that his death in Istanbul sparked Q's promotion to Quartermaster, which was why Bond hadn't met our Q before. I decided to keep that bit here.

Q puts in a service call the very next day.  They take away the chairs in front of his desk.

* * *

“You look like hell.”

“As always, Miss Moneypenny, your concern is touching.”

Moneypenny taps her foot, and the sound reaches Q’s ears with an echo.  “You really aren’t on top of your game, are you?  You usually follow that up with something to the effect that my concern is also hardly necessary.”

Q looks balefully at the tall woman.  From where he’s seated as his desk, she looms over him.  She sighs as he tries to go back to his work.

“What happened to the chairs that used to be in here?” she asks.

“You ask like you don’t already know,” Q says.

“I do, but I don’t.”  Moneypenny leans on the corner of his desk for lack of anywhere else to sit.  “I know you had them taken away.  I don’t know why.  That seems to be the theme of the day, you know.  You look like shit, I don’t know why, everything’s a mess, I don’t know why…”

“We can’t always get what we want.”  Q pauses, then adds, “And, for the record, you’re not the only one who doesn’t have a damn clue what’s going on.”

Moneypenny rolls her eyes.  “Men,” she says.  “Always so dramatic.”

“I’m not the only one giving you a hard time?  And here I thought you only listened to my complaints.  I thought I was special.”

Moneypenny ruffles Q’s hair, and he swats at her hands as she laughs.  “You are very special, Q,” she says.  “So special, we’re going out.”

“That’s terrible logic, and a terrible idea,” Q replies.

“You were perfectly willing to eat crap takeout with M and Tanner a few nights ago,” Moneypenny shoots back, “which means you’ll do just fine coming out with me.”

Q’s eyes narrow.  “How do you know about that anyway?”

“A little bird told me,” Moneypenny says.  “That, and Tanner and M aren’t very good at cleaning up the evidence.  Did you come up to M’s office, too?  Get some of the good cognac to go with your beers and Chinese?”

Moneypenny’s only teasing, but Q’s stomach turns anyway.  Moneypenny must see him go green because she says, “You really aren’t all right, are you?  Come on, you’re coming with me, now.”

“I’m busy,” Q protests.

“What, with that?  I have it on good authority that you started that,” she says, gesturing at the mess that is his desk, “this morning and that it hasn’t changed all throughout the day.  Come on.”

“It’s only been, what, an hour?  Let me be, research is difficult.”

Moneypenny stops pulling for a moment.  “Q, it’s half seven in the evening.”

After a moment following Q’s revelation regarding his complete inability to judge time, Q follows Moneypenny away from Q Division.  She takes him onto the roof, and if she seems to hold onto him more than he feels is strictly necessary, Q finds he doesn’t mind.  Q’s always known that Moneypenny was lonely, but perhaps he didn’t realize just how solitary his life was, too.

* * *

Maybe it’s because Moneypenny seems more whole when she’s helping people, or maybe it’s because Q can still see all his troubles reflected in her skin—

(Take the bloody shot, M says.  Q knows because he listened to the recording.  He’s had nightmares about it.  He seems to have nightmares about everything, now.)

—either way, Q tells her everything.  He starts at the beginning, with his inability to sleep, and the numbers, and 001’s death.  He tells her about Bond, about what happened on his “vacation”, about James Bond and 007.  He explains the chairs, and M and Tanner, and why he hasn’t been sleeping or eating again.

“God, Q,” Moneypenny says when it’s finished.

“I’m sorry,” Q says.  He means it, too.  She doesn’t need the burden of either his childish troubles or his idiosyncrasies.  She shouldn’t have to cope with it, but here she is, doing just that.

“No, I’m sorry,” Moneypenny says.  “I’m sorry all of this is happening to you.  Bond can be,” she tries, “difficult.  We all know, and what he’s doing, he’s trying, and—“

She stops herself so suddenly, Q’s looking to her face for explanation.

“He’s not very good with people outside of work,” Moneypenny says finally, pulling her eyes back to Q.  She has him in a tight embrace, tight enough that he can’t move, and he’s fine with that.  Moneypenny is warm and safe at this very moment.

Very much like Bond was when Q had hit his lowest.

(Except, it wasn’t his lowest, was it?  This is his all-time low, Q realizes.  He’s at rock bottom now.  He’s too tired to even consider quitting anymore.  He doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know.)

“I don’t know what’s going on anymore,” Q says.  “I can’t sleep.  I can’t eat.  I don’t know what Bond wants—or, I’m not sure.  I thought, at first, that it was just pity.  What it actually might be--it scares me.  He scares me.”

Moneypenny rubs a hand over Q’s back.  “James Bond is a very dangerous person, but he wouldn’t deliberately hurt anyone in MI6.  It’s loyalty to Queen and Country for him, the old school way of doing things.”

“It’s not bodily harm that I’m worried about.”  Q stares off of the edge of the building.  “And it’s not just him.  I don’t know what M wants, or how I should best handle my job.  Hell, I don’t even know what I want, either.  Taking this position was a terrible idea.”

Moneypenny shakes her head.  “You know, I feel that way about fieldwork,” she says.  I shot the wrong person.  I was in a bad spot at a bad time and I took the shot because I had to and I missed.”  Q can feel her breathing against his scalp, uneven and warm, and Q strokes her back the way she did for him.  “I let that man, that terrorist, get away with the identities of all of those agents.”  She huffs a laugh, and Q can feel drops of moisture on his scalp.  “I didn’t even think to take a second shot, to clean up the mess.  I was so stunned, I couldn’t do anything.

“I tried to quit, too, you know.  The day I shot Bond, I handed in my resignation and everything.  M, though, God rest her soul, she wouldn’t take it.  I requested time away from fieldwork in lieu of all-out resignation, and she gave it to me.  You know, it was her idea to say that she made me take the time off, rather than admitting that I’d asked for it.  I don’t know what she meant by it, but it helped.  It made it feel less like giving up.”

It’s quiet for long enough that Q thinks he might have fallen asleep, so quiet that he can forget that he’s in the city surrounded by tens of thousands of lives, with only the faintest fraction so much as aware of the existence of Q and Moneypenny.

“I started out as an art student,” Q says, “before going on to try engineering.  I had an exhibition on at uni, can’t remember what I called it, but I paired up canvas paintings of schematics of guns with their real life counterparts.  I’d made them all from scratch.  There were fourteen unique pieces.  I couldn’t display them with the bullets in, but I’d made one round for each.  Cost my advisor a bloody fortune.

“The opening night of the exhibition, she—M—approached me to talk about what I’d made.  Of course, I didn’t know her from Eve.”  Moneypenny gives him a nudge in the arm, and Q makes a face when he gets the joke.  “From any Eve, for that matter.  We talked a little, and she insisted on a demonstration of the firearms.  She impressed me even then, and I wanted to impress her, too.  So, the next day, I rounded up all of them and met her at this firing range on the edge of the city.  I remember, I started to get set up myself, but she wanted to be the one to fire them.

“It was so stressful, seeing her stand there with my guns.  I’d given her everything I’d worked so hard to make, and I was terrified.  They hadn’t been tested before because it hadn’t been necessary.  One might have exploded and that would have been that.

“She took one shot with each gun.  I remember, she was a terrible shot, but she tended to do better with the heavier pieces.  When she finished up, she took off her earmuffs and asked, ‘What do you think?’

“At first, I thought she was talking to me.  Of course, I hadn’t known then that M never went anywhere alone.  You know, she’d brought Q with her,” Q says.

“Boothroyd,” Moneypenny says.

“And he comes out of nowhere and says, ‘Frankly, I think I need to take a better look at the specifications for number nine.  I do believe I want one.’”  Q laughs, and he doesn’t mean it.  “M offered me a job then and there.

“I gave Q the one he’d been impressed with,” Q says, “as a sort of gift.  I thought I’d really fallen in with it.  I’d impressed the head of Q Branch and the head of MI6 with something I’d cobbled together using materials I’d gotten from a second-rate hardware store?  I can’t tell you how highly I thought of myself.  At that time I was indestructible.  I could do no wrong.

“But, like everything else, it all went to pieces.  Q died in that hotel room in Istanbul, shot dead.  And it was my fault, just like everything else.”

“Q?” Moneypenny asks, but now that Q’s begun, he can’t stop.

“He’d taken that gun, my prototype, with him,” Q says.  “You know, when agents went back to get his body, it had been fired?  Or, at least, he’d tried to fire it.  The mechanism wasn’t as smooth as it should have been, and the bullet had jammed.  Q died because I made a lousy piece of equipment and passed it off as a godsend.”

Moneypenny holds him tighter now, and in the equations to model the flow of blood under pressure run across Q’s mind.

“It’s not your fault,” Moneypenny says.

“I can tell you that about your last day of fieldwork,” Q says, “and mean it, and you wouldn’t believe me either, would you?”

Moneypenny just holds him, and Q finds that he’s holding her right back.

In the end, Moneypenny drives Q back to his home.  It’s her idea to pull the comforter off his bed and lay it in the lounge along with all of his other blankets.  They make something of a nest out of it all and they tuck in together, two very broken friends trying to patch themselves together.

Friends, Q thinks before he falls to sleep.  Bond not included, Q hasn’t had friends in a long time.

* * *

The key, Q finds, is other people.

Just about anyone else will do.  He has security drag his desk out of his office and onto the floor of Q Division, enacting a similar set-up as their temporary occupation of Churchill’s bunkers.  The quartermasters initially balk at the added supervision, but quiet down when they realize that Q pays them about as much attention as ever, which is to say very little.

(Except in the case of experiments conducted outside of designated chemical fume hoods.  The incident with tungsten hexafluoride was entirely unacceptable.)

((Tungsten hexafluoride is an unusually dense gas that acts as a corrosive agent.  It adopts a rare molecular conformation, that of the trigonal prism, and is known to mix with bodily fluids such as blood and saliva to form hydrofluoric acid, which proceeds to eat away bones and burn through skin and mucosal tissues.  Near the end of one of his shifts, Q is tired enough to think that it’s rather poetic that he works with human agents that are just as dangerous.  He nixes the thought soon after it comes to him.))

Moneypenny visits more often, as does Tanner.

Bond is noticeably absent.

* * *

Spring turns to summer, which turns over to autumn.  The temperature in the city, which had topped out at an impossible 32 in July, comes down to a pleasant average of 20 degrees.

Q’s hours are as erratic as ever, but the turning of the season means that, for the northern hemisphere, blatant criminal activity is about to die down.  Though no one comes out and says it, everything tends to slow down with the cold.  There are several hypotheses, ranging from the onset of seasonal affective disorder to sheer laziness.

Q doesn’t have an explanation, and he isn’t being paid to find one.  If he has a pet theory, which would certainly be branded as hogwash, he keeps it to himself.  He certainly will never admit to having a rigorous mathematical proof based on probability based on an algorithm he started building in uni.  Never.


	8. Enlightenment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James Bond makes a grand return to Q's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sitting on this for quite some time because I rather feel like it's too soon for this chapter to be happening, but... Here we go.

Bond reappears in Q’s world on October 6th.

Moneypenny, Tanner, and Q have been meeting up for drinks on Thursday nights at nine PM sharp.  Thursday, because that’s the only day other than Sunday none of them have regularly scheduled evening meetings and because the bar they choose isn’t open on Sundays.  They drink and they gossip, and by the end of the night Tanner has managed to take a compliment without looking vaguely shocked, Moneypenny’s fractures are nigh invisible, and Q feels human enough to go another week.

October 6th is a Wednesday.  Q is very much looking forward to tomorrow.

At least he is until Moneypenny comes to see him.  She’s a tempest, and Q doesn’t have the benefit of sitting in the eye of the storm.

“So, made plans, did you?” she asks.

“Of course,” Q says.  “I always have plans.”

“Q, I thought we talked about this.”

Q straightens his glasses.  His desk is clear of everything but his laptop and the scar in the wood that serves to remind him of precisely why no reactions should be carried out outside the fume hood.

(He’d done it by way of demonstration, he swears.  He most certainly did not spill acetyl bromide by accident.  Either way, his quartermasters had looked at him like he walked on water when he cleaned it up himself, which he counted as a plus.)

“Talked about what?” Q asks.  “Of course we talked about it.  We meet every Thursday.”

Moneypenny’s tongue is somewhere between her gums and her bottom lip, and the effect would be comical did she not look as if she wanted to rip off one of Q’s appendages.

“You and Bond?” she asks.  Her voice could be acetyl bromide for all it seems to be doing to the air.  “You meet every Thursday?”

Q blinks once, twice, then opens his mouth.  He settles on, “What?” just about the same time as Moneypenny’s shoulders drop and she says, “Oh, of course.”

“What’s going on now?” Q asks.  He’s perhaps a bit terse, though he thinks he can be forgiven.

No one has so much as mentioned Bond to him since Q talked to Moneypenny.  She had told Q that she had relayed a few general details to M, just to keep him in the loop, and Q hasn’t acted as quartermaster on any of his operations since.

Q, decidedly, does not miss working with Bond.  Not at all.  Not one bit.  No.

“I was informed,” Moneypenny says crisply, “that you were having dinner with 007 tomorrow night.  I was told it was a longstanding arrangement.”  She’s looking at him, and Q’s thoughts are scattered: does she know that she can look at him exactly the same way Bond does when he scrutinizes marks?; did Bond relay her that information personally, or did he send someone to tell her?; and, perhaps most importantly, was he supposed to be having dinner with 007, or with James Bond?

(Further, why does Q feel the need to ask in the first place?  Why does he care?)

Q does not question that Bond knows about his weekly confabs with Moneypenny and Tanner.  He’s a spy, of course he knows.  He questions why Bond would pick Thursday of all days, Thursday night of all nights, to make his grand reappearance.

Q does question why he has already privately tagged it as a grand reappearance rather than a grand nuisance.

“Well,” Q says finally, though he’s well aware that Moneypenny has already made this deduction for herself, “I never made any such agreement.  It’s news to me.”

“Figures,” she says.  “Damn it.”

Q shifts.  “What do we do?”

“What do you want to do?”

Moneypenny is watching him carefully.  It’s the same look she’d given him before, on the roof.  Q isn’t so romantic to have given a name to that particular moment in his life, but he recognizes that it was one, and a well-defined one at that.

“You’re worried that it’ll happen again,” Q says.  “Whatever happened before.”

“You’re my friend,” Moneypenny says frankly.  “I care.  We were in a bad state.”

“We?” Q echoes, trying to infuse at least a little levity into the suddenly rather deep conversation.  “Are you planning on shooting someone again?”

“That someone might well be the same someone, depending on how things go,” Moneypenny says.

Q isn’t sure if he wants to reprimand her or thank her.  He does both, and she smiles.  He figures he’s done all right.

* * *

He realizes when he gets home that night that he hasn’t decided what, exactly, he is going to do about James Bond.  It’s only when his stomach, long unmoved, flips again that Q realizes that something has to give.

He makes himself a cup of tea and sits down to work it out.  The easiest thing to do, he realizes, is to make a chart.  That’s what he did all throughout secondary school and on into uni — when in doubt, make a list.

In this case, the Pros and Cons of Involvement with James Bond.  He types the words, and he feels much better about getting started until he realizes that he’s already back at square one in that he doesn’t know precisely what sort of “involvement” is implied.

(He has a hypothesis, of course.  Every good researcher always makes a point to come up with a sound hypothesis.  Q thinks that his own is rather weak in terms of predictive power, but he’s willing to test it anyway.)

((Q is, as of this moment, still unwilling to voice his hypothesis out loud.))

The point is, Bond is acting strangely.  He has been for a while.  It started when Bond broke him out of Medical — no, before that, Q has to amend.  Bond objected when he found Q’s draft of a letter of resignation.

Q pulls back again.  Actually, it was before that, wasn’t it?  Before that, Bond started to request Q to be his point person.  They’d had that conversation while Bond was driving in Argentina — and Q had never figured out just what had happened there, anyway.  And before that, there was the issue with the communication links.

Q has to puzzle through all of this, unrelated though it may be, before he figures out exactly what Bond wants.

Q thinks back to the earliest moment he can classify as “Bond Acting Strangely”, otherwise known as “The Curious Case of the Malfunctioning Feeds”.

As far as Q could tell, there was nothing wrong with them, not then, nor now, nor ever.  He’d poured over them, replaced every part, and they’d functioned exactly the same way.  They couldn’t be faulty.  Unlikely though it is to help, Q thinks back to what Bond was saying shortly before his voice went odd.  In less time than it takes to say it, Q pulls up the audio records for the conversation.

_“I see them_ ,” the Bond in the recording says.  

_“I don’t.  Where are you?_ ” Hearing himself speak is disconcerting.  Q’s never liked how his voice sounds on tape, and on top of that he sounds exhausted.

Bond laughs, and the sound echoes around Q’s apartment.   _“You know where I am, see for yourself.  Where are you?”_

_“Did you have to steal a car?”_ recording-Q asks, and the non-sequitur throws the real Q for a moment until he remembers that he was panning through the cameras he keeps in each of Bond’s cars trying to get a good view at the time.

_“Who says I stole it?_ ”  A pause, then, _“You never answered my question.”_

_“My office.”_

_“You’re not home yet?”_

Recording-Q pauses.   _“Why would I be, 007?”_

There’s a long silence.  

Recording-Q fills it instead of Bond.   _“I know you stole it because all I can see is your GPS location.”_

_“I knew you’d gotten to my cars with your little cameras.  Let’s hope you haven’t gotten my flat, too.”_

_“Don’t you have something to be doing, 007?”_

Q startles at his own voice.  He sounds despondent, and perhaps a little angry.  Q ups the volume.  If he remembers correctly, they’re getting to the part where something changed.

Q can hear Bond make a humming noise.   _“I do.  But I was thinking.”_

It sounds like Bond is going to continue to speak, but recording-Q says, _“That’s a rather dangerous pastime for you, or so I’m told.”_

Bond laughs again, and with a louder volume it sounds almost as if the man were present.   _“I know.  Instruments aren’t supposed to think.”_

There’s another long silence.  Bond ends it with, _“They’ve picked a terrible restaurant.”_

Q pauses the recording and gets up to make himself a fresh cup of tea.  Between referring to himself as an instrument and remarking on the restaurant, something shifted in Bond.  Bond failed to answer right away when Q as good as snapped at him for talking to him without reason, and again when he thought of himself in terminology that smacked of dehumanization.  This gives Q pause.  Agents regularly refer to themselves as instruments, and for all of the time that he’s been at MI6, it has never bothered Q before.  Now, though, Q’s scrutinizing it.  He’s picking through it all, trying to find whatever was under the conversation Q had months ago.

It hits Q around the time that the kettle boils that Bond had been trying to talk to him as a person rather than as an agent, but twice Q had gotten in the way.  The first time, Q had reminded Bond that Bond was holding him there in the conversation without reason, throwing off whatever Bond was working up to.  The second time, just as Bond was getting to the point, Q had indirectly reminded Bond that he was an agent, less of a person and more of a tool.

Q takes a moment to call himself an idiot.  It’s obvious to anyone who’s gotten a modicum of sleep what this appears to be.

He thinks to the Argentina conversation.  That was the first time following Paris that Bond contacted Q, and he’d done it in the one way MI6 disapproves of agents and quartermasters interacting: on a request basis.  The late M had informed him when he was promoted that, on no uncertain terms, he was meant to decline any and all personal requests from agents to act as point.  Agents, particularly the double-0 section, she had warned, were capricious beings prone to shift this way and that.  It was best to stay emotionally and physically as far away as possible, for the mutual benefit of both parties.

Yet Bond had pestered someone else into giving up the comm, and Q had willingly accepted the obvious bait.  What had happened then?  Q pulls up the file. 

_“You know, it is illegal to talk and drive in Argentina.  I doubt M will pay for your ticket if you get pulled over.”_

_“I missed you, too.”_

Q pauses the recording, then replays it.  The words remain the same.  Bond hadn’t called into Q-Division for six missions, or some large number like that, between the Paris conversation and this one, and these are the first words he says to break that silence.

Q plays it back one more time, just to hear it: _“I missed you, too.”_

There’s no sarcasm there, no underlying meaning.  It sounds, naive though it is to think so, shockingly honest.

Q continues the recording.

_“I’ll remind you that it’s you who hasn’t called in,”_ recording-Q says, oblivious to what the agent has said.   _“Are you terrorizing my subordinates that they feel the need to hand you off to me?”_  Q rubs his temples.  Does he always sound so harsh?

There’s that laugh again, Bond’s laugh.  Q hasn’t turned the volume down, and it reverberates just the same way as the laughter on the first recordings.  Bond laughs so freely when he talks to Q.

Q has a very good idea where this is going.  Still, he listens on with new ears, as if he hadn’t supplied one of the voices himself.

_“I merely asked for the privilege of your pleasant company over their stuttering inadequacy.  Honestly, Q, hire better techs.”_

_“They aren’t techs, they’re quartermasters, and they_ are _better.  I manage the best.  It’s you who terrorizes them.  They’re not field agents, 007.  Most of us don’t take well to the double-0 mentality.”_

_“Which is why I asked for you.”_

Q finds this statement odd and in perfect correspondence with his hypothesis.  Recording-Q senses something’s off again, because he says, _“Protocol mandates that agents do not request quartermasters.  Aside from that, M doesn’t seem to think you want to work with me at all.  Something about not wanting to work with the latest generation._ ”

God, but recording-Q sounds so upset about it, Q thinks.  He sounds rather desperate, though Q doesn’t remember the feeling.

_“I’d think asking for you personally rather contradicts that hypothesis, wouldn’t you say?”_

The conversation carries on until recording-Q implies that Bond hasn’t been reporting trouble with the feeds.  The pause, just as long and similar as those from the Paris tape, lengthens.

_“No, the feeds are functioning just fine.  There’s nothing wrong with them, never was.  I’m afraid I’ve been playing with you.  I hope you don’t mind._   _I’ve been busy, but, my dear quartermaster,”_ the real Q flushes at the personal pronoun, _“if you’ve missed me that much you ought to have opened the lines yourself.  You know I do miss you when we’re so far away.”_

In contrast with how sincere Bond sounds, recording-Q says, _“Save your pseudo-charms for your targets, 007.  All I want to know is if my tech’s working.”_

Another pause, then, _“Of course.  It’s working perfectly.”_

There’s silence until the tape ends.  Bond went from “my dear quartermaster” to no name at all following Q’s accusation that he was treating Q like a mark.  Bond said that he missed him, and on the second hearing it sounds less like he was mocking Q and more like he actually meant what he was saying.

Much as Q fears to say it, all evidence points in one direction: Bond Likes Q.  Not as a colleague, but as a person.

How far does that “Like” extend?  Q isn’t sure.  It could easily broach the realm of friendship, but Q doesn’t know that Bond has friends to start with.

In fact, Q knows very little about Bond beyond the bare bones of his files.  Contrary to popular opinion, everything there is to know about James Bond, a.k.a. 007, is not contained in any file, anywhere.  Q knows because he’s looked.  Curious about the man who blew up his own house to try to save his superior, Q dug as deep as he could and came up with nothing.  There are no digital files on Bond beyond the basic identification documents and standard height, weight, psychological evaluations, etc.  If there were ever anything else kept by MI6, it must have gone up in flames with the dead M’s office.

James Bond is more of a ghost than a person.

(A specialist in resurrection, indeed.  More like he was never really there to begin with.)

Q pulls himself back to the project at hand.  He has more evidence to go on — Bond as good as denied Q’s resignation ahead of time, he kidnapped Q from Medical and took care of him when Q fell hard, he spent all of his free time with Q following his return, and then that peculiar gesture in Q-Division.

All of it confirms the hypothesis.

Q’s stomach is doing backflips to put Olympic athletes to shame.

Back to the list.  After the Q-Division incident, as Q labels it, Bond backed off.  Q had reacted negatively to Bond’s advances, and Bond had given him space.  Q notes that this, too, confirms that whatever this is, it is very Not Regular Bond Behavior.  Bond never backs off.  It’s in the job description.

And yet.  It’s been quite some time since Q has seen Bond or even interacted with him.  Now, apparently, they have dinner plans.

All historical evidence points to going out with Bond, for any reason whatsoever, to be a terrible idea.  Q heard a rumor that Moneypenny is the only person alive who’s slept with James Bond and lived to tell of it.

Then again, this is dinner, and it’s not even couched as a date.  (At least, to the best of Q’s knowledge.  After all, it’s not like the agent asked him directly or anything.)

All current evidence, viewed objectively, portrays Bond as one very broken person who’s trying very hard.  Were it anyone else, Q wouldn’t hesitate to at least give a pity date.

But.  This is James Bond, otherwise known as 007: a trained assassin and master of international espionage.

Q groans and puts his head on the table.  He feels as though he’s gotten nowhere.  Not only that, but his thoughts have dissolved to near fragments.

Desperately, he thinks of going to sleep.  He goes so far as to move to his bedroom and put on night clothes, fully aware that the venture will be a fruitless one.  He needs to sleep, but he can’t, not tonight.  He’s been better lately, but this new revelation has blown him out of the water, so to speak.

He lays down and stares at the ceiling until it starts to swim.

Around this time, the phone rings.

* * *

At first, Q can hear everything and nothing.  Everything, because it’s a cacophony of all-encompassing noise reduced to a tinny, wheezy blurb of sound.  Nothing, because it’s indecipherable to the point of bordering on a particularly malicious white noise.

“Q speaking,” Q says.  It’s hardly necessary, not only because he doubts anyone is actually listening, but because whoever has called knows it’s him by virtue of the fact that they’ve called his work phone.

Miraculously, everything becomes silent.  It’s quiet for so long that Q checks to make sure that the other party is still on the line.

“Sir?”

Q shuts his eyes.  He remembers this voice — it’s one of his quartermasters, the one Bond had pestered until he’d given the comm to Q.  Q still can’t remember his name to save his life.

“Yes?”

“007 would like to speak with you, sir.”  Q doesn’t immediately reply.  The ceiling is gyrating.  “Sir?”

“What does he want?” Q demands.

There’s silence, then a sound that sounds rather like the hiss of a snake.  Q gathers, after a few seconds of listening, that it’s the collective whispering of what must be the Q-Division night crew.  He thinks he can hear something over it, but whoever Q thinks he can hear is too far away from the phone’s receiver to be intelligible.

“He wants to talk to you in private,” the quartermaster says.  He stutters over the word “talk”.  Q would feel bad for him, or at least have an ounce of sympathy, if he weren’t torn between exhaustion and anger.

“Is he there?” Q demands, and though the rational part of his mind is aware that what he’s getting ready to do is a terrible idea — the worst idea, in fact — he’s too far gone to care.

“Yes, sir.”

“Put him on.”

There’s a pause, and Q hears, “Hello, Q.”

“Come to Ilchester Place, London, W14.  If you continue to pester my quartermasters, I’ve got a taser set to kill in my desk and R knows how to use it.”

Q hangs up and throws an arm over his eyes.

“Shit,” he says.  He just told Bond where he lives.  He invited — no, he ordered Bond to come here.

Q already knows he’ll come.  It’s just a matter of when.

“Shit,” he says again.  What else is there to say?

* * *

Q gets dressed, though he considers not.  After all, it is his home.

He can’t bring himself to remain in his nightclothes, though.  He feels jittery and sick, just the same as when he had to give presentations in secondary school.  He always knew that his presentation was sound, but there was always that moment that felt shockingly like free fall when he had the fleeting feeling that he was going to mess up in some spectacular way that would have long-lasting consequences.

Q thinks that this latest move on his part certainly fits the bill.  He’d have a drink, but he hasn’t been keeping alcohol in the house.  He doesn’t have any cigarettes, either.  He smoked like a stack in uni, but the dead M had forced him to quit when he was hired.

In retrospect, Q is grateful that she was as forceful as she was with regards to the matter.  She’d given the order so that he’d do his job better and so that MI6 wouldn’t be faced with a quartermaster with lung cancer however many years down the line, but Q found that his head was clearer and his thoughts sharper once he’d stopped.

Now, though, all it means is not only can he not have a drink, but he also can’t fog his mind with his drug of choice.

(He also won’t have anything to offer Bond, but Q thinks that’s a bit beside the point.)

Q dumps his cold tea in the sink and comes back to the lounge.

Q’s dining room (never used as such, but it’s pretty to look at) is contiguous to the lounge, but Q has broken up the space with the addition of a grand piano.  Q runs a finger over the rim and spine of the piano.  It’s an old Steinway, a relic of his mother’s.  Q has always had a weakness for the old and the beautiful, and when everything else was sold off following her death, Q stubbornly held onto the piano.

He hasn’t played in months.  Part of it’s that he’s been too busy, part of it’s that he’s been too nervous.  He was an excellent pianist once.  He’d taken lessons and performed and done everything that children who play music do.

Now, he’s all but traded the keys of the piano for those of a computer.  His hand posture is probably no good anymore, though he reckons that he’ll be just as fast as he used to be.

He’s sitting at the piano bench, staring at the keys and wondering when everything got so difficult, when he hears the knock at the door.

Out of curiosity, he peeks through the peephole before unbolting the door.  Bond stands there, looking all around him, his hands in his pockets.  To Q’s untrained eye, he looks nervous.

Q opens the door enough to lean against the frame, and Bond looks up to him.

There’s that look again, or at least, Q thinks it’s that look at first.  He thinks it’s that hopeful, desperate thing that he’d seen when Bond had taken him to the park.  It looks sadder, older now.

For the second time of the night, against Q’s better judgment, he opens the door.

“Better come in, then,” he says, moving inside.  Bond follows him and closes the door.

Q does not look at him as he moves to the lounge.  He can hear Bond following him, taking inventory of the new location.

On a whim, Q asks if Bond would like anything to drink.  To his surprise, the agent replies that he’s just fine, thanks.

Since Bond appears preoccupied with the surroundings, Q takes the time to make himself another cup of tea.  Absently, he presses against his wrist — twenty-five beats in fifteen seconds for one hundred beats per minute, precisely forty more per minute than is usual for Q.

He swallows, and he feel his palms, sticky as they are with sweat.  He can hardly face Bond as nervous as he is, but he has to.

When he turns around, cup of tea in hand, Bond is running a gloved hand over the piano in much the same way Q did before Bond arrived.

“Do you play?” Bond asks.

“I used to,” Q answers.  “I haven’t in years.”

“Why did you stop?”

Q can answer that, but he doesn’t want to.  “I grew out of it, I suppose.  You grow out of lots of things. But it makes a lovely piece, and I couldn’t part with it.”

“It is indeed lovely,” Bond says.  He gives no indication of whether or not he buys Q’s explanation.  “This whole place is lovely.”

Q nods.  “Thank you.”

“And you live here alone?”

“That’s right.”

Bond’s looking at the piano again.  “I suppose that if I had offered to drive you home before, you wouldn’t have told me to leave you here.”

Q takes a moment to remember that Bond is referring to their first day together during Q’s mandatory leave of absence.  “No,” Q says softly.  “I wouldn’t have told you to come here.”

“Does anyone know you live out here?”

Q leans against the back of a plush sofa.  “M, of course.  And Moneypenny.”

“Moneypenny?”

“Though you assisted me during my mandatory leave of absence, the fact of which I am eternally grateful, I still haven’t been myself.  Moneypenny took it upon herself to help me out as well.”

“And you brought her back here.”

There’s an edge to Bond’s voice that makes Q look up.  The quartermaster doesn’t remember when he’d looked away, but now he feels that he should have been watching Bond the entire time.

It doesn’t take a double-0 agent to tell that Bond’s body is coiled and tense.  If he’s going for nonchalance, he’s failing miserably.  His shoulders and spine are rigid, and his jaw is working a mile a minute.

“More like the other way around,” Q says.

Bond nods once.  “I’m happy for you,” he says.

Q frowns.  “Thank you?” he says.  The agent isn’t watching him, but there are too many emotions playing across his face for Q to let it be.  “007, was there something you needed?”

The agent laughs, though it isn’t laughter: it’s short and rough, more a bark than any sort of genuine display of mirth.  “007,” he says.  “I thought we only used titles in the field.”

“Bond—“

“It’s all right, Q.”  He makes that noise again, and Q winces.  “I suppose I always use your title, don’t I?  I hardly know who you are.”

“That’s right,” Q says, if only because it’s true.

“Tell me, then,” Bond asks, “do you exist beyond Q?”  

Q looks back down at the sofa.  “Whatever I was before I joined MI6,” he says softly, “is that what you mean?”  There’s a silence that Q assumes means is a yes.  “I don’t think that person exists anymore, no.”

The silence deafens.  Q says, “Bond—“

“Does Moneypenny know?”

“What do you mean?”

Bond moves toward the door.  “Never mind,” he says.

“Bond, just wait,” Q demands.

Bond stops.  Q stops.  He has the realization that he has no idea what he’s doing.

“Bond,” Q says again.  “You came here for a reason.  What was it?”

“I came because you asked me to.”

“No, that’s not it.  You were in Q-Division, presumably looking for me.”

“I was returning my equipment.”

Q sighs.  “Don’t lie to me, please.  You haven’t been on assignment since summer.”

Bond’s smile is sharp and cold.  “Has it crossed your mind that I might not want to work with the younger generation?”

Q is quiet at that.  “It has,” Q says.  “I just took it on faith that you told me the truth the first time I asked you about it.”

Bond has nothing to say to that.  That smile, all ice and daggers, is gone, replaced by something else.

(Q gives up trying to understand what’s going on with Bond’s face.  Q’s never been good enough with people for it anyway, and trying to read Bond is like trying to trace the cracks of a glacier.  It’s impossible to tell precisely what’s going on underneath the ice except to say that something is indeed transpiring.)

“If you want to leave, go right ahead.  I won’t stop you again,” Q says.  “I just thought you had something to say.”

Bond remains silent.  Q’s back and neck ache from the tension in his body and from holding his position across the back of the sofa for as long as he has.  He moves around so that he can sit on the sofa, taking a sip of tea.  It’s still scalding hot, though given the froideur in the room it has no right to be.

“I was going to ask you to dinner,” Bond says finally.  “I told Moneypenny I would take you out tomorrow night.”  He smiles, and it’s a different smile from before, but Q is most certainly not cataloguing Bond’s responses.  “I suppose now I know why she was so angry about it.”

“Thursdays are rather difficult.  We like to go out then.”

“I should have noticed.  It’s my fault, really.  I thought…”

Bond trails off, leaving Q to say something, anything at all.  “You thought what?”

“I thought you might be interested, is all.”

Q rolls the nervous ball of saliva around his mouth, swallows, and repeats.  “And if I were?” Q asks.

Bond’s eyes turn to him faster than Q can account for, and Q’s reeling.  He sets his tea aside so that he can worry his fingers.

“But you’re not,” Bond says.  Q frowns.  “I don’t think you understand.”

Q smiles in spite of the situation.  “No,” he says.  “I don’t think that I do.  I don’t think I understand anything that’s been happening for some time, now.”

Bond looks physically pained.  “I’ve tried,” he says.  “I know that you aren’t interested, I do.  But I can’t seem to shake you.  I don’t think James Bond exists, but I want him to.”  The pained look intensifies.  “I’ve been trying to resurrect him for you.”

Q takes a breath.  This is it, whatever it is.  It’s coming now.  “Bond, what are you saying?”

Bond shifts back and forth, then says, “Would a demonstration be remiss?”

“Honestly, I’m lost.  Anything that you can do to clarify would be most welcome.”

It takes Bond all of two seconds according to Q’s internal clock.  He crosses the room in a mere handful of strides.  Q feels a shiver start at the top of his neck and work its way down past his shoulders and to his lower back as he anticipates the hands that come to grab him, one on each side of his face.

And, quick as anything, Bond’s lips meet his.

Far from a jolt, it’s tender and soft, and Q’s stomach does the largest flip in recent memory.  He’s hot, and he’s cold, and Bond is pressing ever so lightly, holding back as if afraid Q might snap.

A kiss.  Bond is kissing him.  Q is being kissed by James Bond.

And, just as quickly as it starts, Bond is backing off, leaving Q dazed.  His skin refuses to come to a normal temperature, and his eyes refuse to progress beyond the half-lidded stage.  He blinks at Bond, breathing through his mouth.

“Ah,” is all he can say because yes, he was right, and the implications go just as far as Q’s impossible hypothesis anticipated.

“I’m sorry,” Bond says.  “It won’t happen again.”  The agent walks toward the door.  “I wish all the best for you and Moneypenny.”

Q gets the full picture just as the door opens.  “Wait, _what_?”

Bond sighs.  “It won’t happen again.  Forgive me if you can.”

“No, wait,” Q says, lurching off of the sofa.  “Wait just a moment.  You keep bringing up Moneypenny.  What does Moneypenny have to do with, with…?”  Q’s fingers brush against his own lips, incapable as he is of verbalizing what has just transpired.  “Moneypenny,” Q says.  The idea is so ludicrous that Q can’ hardly get the words out.  “You think I’m— Do you think that I’m dating Moneypenny?”  

“Aren’t you?”

Q shuts his eyes and resists the urge to laugh.  “Close the door, Bond.”

“But—“

“Please close the door.”

The agent does so, and goes so far as to follow Q back to the lounge.  Q sinks back to where he was, and gestures for Bond to do the same.

“I’m not in a relationship with Eve Moneypenny,” Q says, somewhat perfunctorily.  Bond is watching him the way Q’s seen the agent watch marks.  As usual, he doesn’t like it.  “Believe what you will, but this is true.  I’m not in a relationship with anyone.  If we’re going to split hairs about it, I’ve never been in a relationship with anyone at all, full stop.”

Q breathes in as Bond breathes out.

“I think I perhaps could have been a bit clearer,” Q says.  “Moneypenny is my friend.  One of my only friends, at the moment.  She, Bill Tanner and I go out for drinks every Thursday night.”  Bond is smiling, and Q can’t see why.  “It’s the only night we all have off on a consistent basis.”

“You go out for drinks with Moneypenny and Tanner,” Bond repeats.

“That’s right.  We have drinks, and we talk about our lives, or lack thereof.”

“I thought you were...”

“I’m seeing that now, yes.  It would be rather awkward going on dates with Moneypenny with Tanner there, too.  In fact, I can’t imagine that would be an overly pleasant way to spend a romantic evening, to be honest, not that I can truly picture myself on a date with Moneypenny at all.”

Bond’s got a hand over his mouth now, and his body is shaking with suppressed laughter.  “Bond?” Q asks.  The agent shakes his head, and his grin is evident.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Bond says, and Q thinks that he might even mean it.  “At this moment, there is very little that is actually wrong.”  The agent comes to stand in front of Q.  “It looks like I played my hand before it was time.”

“You mean this?” Q asks, running a finger over his lips again.  He sees that the agent tracks it with his eyes.

“Quite.  I don’t suppose you’d be willing to consider my offer.”

“For dinner?” Q asks.  Bond waits.  “I suppose it depends on what you’re offering.”

“Other than dinner?”

“Other than dinner.”

“I thought I made myself quite clear.”

Q shakes his head.  His lips buzz.  “I don’t mean about that.  I suppose I rather mean your intentions.”

“I thought I made those clear, too.”

Bond’s smiling, but Q needs to know exactly what he’s dealing with.  “No,” Q says.  “Fine.  I mean to ask what you’re looking for in the long run.”  Bond’s smile fades.  “Just because I’ve not found myself in a relationship doesn’t mean I’m on the prowl for one-night stands, or even two-night stands.”

“Do you think me incapable of constancy?”

“You’ve not demonstrated a track record that indicates it, no.”

Bond crouches down in front of Q.  It can’t be comfortable, wedged as he is between the sofa and the coffee table.  “Perhaps that’s because, like you, I don’t have much in the way of a record.”

Q huffs a laugh.  “Then what do you term every mission report you bring back?  How many sexual partners have you had, anyway?”

“I term that work,” Bond says.  “I’ve had one relationship.  Just one.  And it wasn’t long enough to tell one way or the other.”

Q sobers immediately.  Moneypenny mentioned this Vesper Lynd, assuming that is indeed the one Bond is referencing.  Q hasn’t done any additional digging, but he thinks what he recalls is sufficient.

“I’d like to take you out for dinner,” Bond breathes, and Q wonders just when the agent got so close.  “And after that, we’ll see how you feel.”

“What about you?” Q asks.  Bond’s eyes are very, very close.

“What do you mean?”

“Won’t we have to see how you feel as well?”

Bond gives that deep laugh, the one Q’s listened to several times over this evening, and Q’s breath catches in his throat.  “I think I know how I feel about this,” Bond says.  He’s still got those gloves on — Q curses himself for not asking if he could take Bond’s jacket, at the very least, make him feel more at home, something — and he’s running his fingers along Q’s jaw, Q’s neck.  This time, the quartermaster does not flinch away.  His pulse beats erratically under his skin.  He’s trapped between a double-0—Bond—and a sofa.  He decides that he shouldn’t like the idea so much, then decides he doesn’t care.

“Do I get to know when dinner is?” Q asks, if only to try to think about something other than the play of leather against his skin.

Bond’s smile looks bigger than it ought to up close.  “Seven,” Bond says.  Q swears that Bond traces the number on his skin.

“Do I get to know where?”

Bond looks him in the eye.  Q can see his smile even there.  “No.”

“It’s going to be awfully hard for me to meet you for dinner if I don’t know where to go.”

“I’m going to drive us.”

“Ah.”  Bond’s massaging the back of Q’s neck.  His fingers find stress knots and press.  Q whimpers, and his face flushes.  “I don’t suppose there’s a dress code I ought to know about, is there?”  His breathing has been erratic for some time now, but it’s getting steadily worse.  He can’t look away from Bond.

“If I told you that, you’d get nervous.”

“I’m already nervous, and that makes a yes.”  Q leans back, and Bond’s hand cradles Q’s head.  It’s surreal, and very comfortable.  “I suppose I’ll have to crack out my good suit.”

The sound that emerges from Bond’s throat might be a growl.  “I suppose you will,” he says.

Q leans back up and towards Bond, and Bond comes forward.

Bond’s phone rings.

The agent lets loose a stream of colorful curses and backs up, glaring at the screen.

“M,” he says simply.

“You’d better take it,” Q says.

The device gets through another half ring before, “Bond here.”

Q can hear M as good as shouting across the line and moves to give the agent some privacy.  Bond stands to let him pass but before Q can get too far he grabs Q’s wrist, cradling it.  Slowly, the agent pulls Q back towards him.

Closer, Q can hear M’s tirade with a greater degree of clarity.  Apparently, the quartermasters are terrified that Bond has come to kill Q, and they’ve taken their fears to M.  M is of the opinion that the fear isn’t so unfounded.

“It’s bad form to kill one’s quartermaster,” Bond says smoothly in response to the allegations.  “After all, Q and I have just had a most enlightening conversation.”

“Have you, now?”

Though Bond’s explanation is far from explicit, Q feels the heat rising in his face.  “That’s right.  Tell Q Division that their chief quartermaster is entirely unharmed.  Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Bond hangs up amidst M’s protests.

“Really, Bond—“

“James,” Bond says before pulling him in by the wrist.  Bond catches Q’s other hand before tugging him closer.  Q’s quite sure his face most closely resembles a beet.

“James,” Q repeats.

Bond kisses him again, and Q has the presence of mind to kiss back.


End file.
